This article is more than 9 years old

This article is more than 9 years old

Police in Denmark and Sweden arrested five men yesterday on suspicion of planning to attack the Danish newspaper that printed cartoons portraying the prophet Muhammad.

Danish intelligence officials, describing it as the country's most serious terror operation, said the men had planned to storm the Copenhagen offices of Jyllands-Posten and "kill as many as possible of those around".

The four people detained in Denmark were said to be a 44-year-old Tunisian national, a 29-year-old Lebanese-born man, a 30-year-old Swedish national of unknown origins and a 26-year-old Iraqi.

Swedish police arrested the fifth man, a 37-year-old Swedish national of Tunisian origin living in Stockholm.

There have been previous plots against both Jyllands-Posten and the artist, Kurt Westergaard, who drew the most contentious of 12 cartoons that were published by the paper in 2005 as a challenge to perceived self-censorship.

Sources: The Guardian/CNN Video report: BBC