Hungarian anti-terrorist police have said they detained four people last week heading to the capital with explosives in their car and found a bomb-making laboratory.

Security has been tightened for senior officials entitled to “top protection”, the Counter Terrorism Centre said in a statement. Its director general, Janos Hajdu, said the suspects were detained last week as police stepped up investigations that touched on the security of the officials, whom he declined to name.

After the suspects in the car were detained a house search revealed a bomb-making laboratory with “explosives and devices that were suitable for killing people to the utmost extent”, Hajdu told the state television channel M1.

He said police also caught two other people with submachine guns, ammunition and silencers in their car, and that it was not clear whether the two groups were connected.

Much of western Europe has been on high alert since Islamist militants killed 130 people in co-ordinated attacks in Paris on 13 November that were claimed by Islamic State, and the Belgian capital Brussels has been in lockdown for several days because of fears that another attack is imminent.

Asked whether the Hungary suspects had jihadist links, Hajdu said: “Let me reply to that in the next few days.”



Hajdu declined to disclose the suspects’ identities, nationalities or presumed motives but said the case had an international dimension.

M1 said two of the suspects had been formally placed under arrest and a court would decide on the others on Wednesday.

