British police shot and injured one man and arrested a second in a major anti-terrorist raid on a house in east London following suspicions that it was being used to make chemical weapons. Police sources told Sky News they expected to find a chemical bomb of some kind at the house, while the Press Association news agency said the dawn swoop followed intelligence about a suspected plot on British soil.
BBC television named them as Abdul Jalal and Abdul Kahar, without giving sources. It said both men were of Bangladeshi origin. One worked for postal firm Royal Mail and was said to be religious.
London's Metropolitan Police refused to comment on the men's identities and reports about chemical weapons.
But Peter Clarke, the head of the force's anti-terrorist branch, said: "The intelligence was such that it demanded an intensive investigation and response."
He added: "We planned an operation that was designed to mitigate any threat to the public either from firearms or from any hazardous substances."
Anti-terror officers worked closely with other agencies, including the Security Service and the Health Protection Agency (HPA), to plan the swoop.
The HPA has responsibilities for public safety when hazards involving chemicals, poisons or radiation occur.
Highlighting the significance of the raid, Prime Minister Tony Blair, who is in Italy, was informed about the plan beforehand, a spokeswoman from his Downing Street office said.
Police, however, said the operation had no link to the deadly bombings last July on the London transport network which left 56 people dead, including the four suicide bombers.
A large number of officers, 250 according to the BBC, stormed the house in the Forest Gate area at 4:00 am (0300 GMT), where police fired a single shot.
A neighbour said he saw a man wearing a bloodstained T-shirt being carried out of the property on Lansdown Road. He was reportedly shot in the shoulder.
The injured man, 23, whose wounds were not life-threatening, was taken to the Royal London Hospital, where he was later arrested on suspicion of being involved in plotting "acts of terrorism", police said.
Angry at the shooting, about 20 Asian men gathered outside the hospital gate to protest.
A 21-year-old man, who did not want to be named, said: "Going into someone's house and shooting them in front of their mum, that's not right is it?
"Just because they have got a beard doesn't mean to say you can shoot them."
Another man, aged 23, who also requested anonymity, told Press Association that the injured suspect was a "straightforward guy" who worked for the Royal Mail postal service.
The second man arrested in the raid, aged 20, was being held at a high-security police station in central London. Reports said the two men were brothers.
More than 12 hours after the raid began, scores of officers in protective clothing were still at the scene, where a number of cordons were in place and roads closed. Tents and scaffolding were erected in front of the raided house.
A five-mile (eight-kilometre) air exclusion zone was in force overhead.
Clarke said officers were conducting a thorough investigation to prove or disprove the "specific intelligence" which prompted the raid.
"One part of it will be a painstaking search of the premises in Lansdown Road," he said, underlining that this may take several days.
Several other people who were in the house at the time of the raid were moved out but not arrested.
The area has a large number of Bengali and Pakistani families who have lived there for some time and a recent influx of people from eastern Europe, said Salim Mala, 42, who runs a shop close to one of the police cordons.
Meanwhile, the Independent Police Complaints Commission launched an investigation into the shooting of the 23-year-old man.
British police were heavily criticized for shooting dead an innocent Brazilian on a subway train in London last July as part of an anti-terrorist operation mounted in the aftermath of the London bombings.
