SYDNEY, Australia -- Two Islamic terrorist cells were competing to become the first to stage a major bombing in Australia, a prosecutor said Tuesday after police arrested 17 suspects in a series of coordinated pre-dawn raids in two cities.
About 500 police arrested nine men in the southern city of Melbourne and eight in Sydney, including one man critically injured in a gunfight with police.
Police said they expected more arrests in coming days and weeks, but Prime Minister John Howard on Wednesday assured Muslims they were not being targeted.
"People who support terrorism are as much their enemies as they are my or your enemies," Howard told Sydney Radio 2GB. "There is nothing in our laws, nor will there be anything in our laws, that targets an individual group, be it Islamic or otherwise."
Ameer Ali, president of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, said the country's nearly 300,000-member Muslim community was shocked at the number of arrests and that all the suspects appeared to be Muslims. Some of their supporters clashed violently with news cameramen in Melbourne and Sydney on Tuesday.
One of the suspects, Abdulla Merhi, wanted to carry out attacks to avenge the war in Iraq, police said in a Melbourne court. Howard was a strong supporter of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and has sent hundreds of troops to the country.
Norm Hazzard, who heads the state's counterterrorism police unit, said the suspects were followers of the al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.
"I think you can go back to Osama bin Laden and those who follow his philosophy _ that is what terrorism in its modern form is all about and there's no doubt that this group followed that same philosophy," he said.
Police said the alleged plotters apparently had not settled on a target.
Adam Houda, a defense lawyer, said the Sydney suspects were innocent.
"There's no evidence that terrorism was contemplated or being planned by any particular person at any particular time or at any particular place," he said.
The raids came less than a week after Howard strengthened counterterrorism laws and said intelligence agencies had warned of a possible terrorist attack. He went on national TV Tuesday to say the risk was not over, despite the arrests.
