Police officers have been given until Christmas Day to decide whether to charge four men held as part of an operation to foil a suspected Christmas terrorist attack.
Chip shop owner Andy Sami Star, 31, and three other men, aged 22, 36 and 41, are being questioned by police after raids in Derbyshire and South Yorkshire on Tuesday morning.
Specialist teams returned on Wednesday to the scene of one arrest in Chesterfield to help with ongoing searches, the north-east counter-terrorism unit said.
The force has asked residents to be “alert but not alarmed” after Tuesday’s raid on Mermaid Tradition Fish Bar which involved an army bomb squad.
In Sheffield on Wednesday, counter-terrorism officers flew a drone back and forth over the Fatima community centre in Burngreave which, along with a mosque, had been sealed off. Some officers later climbed on to the flat roof of the centre to take a closer look at targets identified in the drone’s video footage, while others donned protective clothing to search through bins outside the building.
Residents had reported being woken early on Tuesday by a series of loud bangs and seeing camouflaged officers with guns. Witnesses said a man was later taken from the property.
The four men being questioned by police at a station in West Yorkshire are being held on suspicion of being concerned in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.
Police said the arrests were “intelligence-led and pre-planned” as part of an ongoing investigation.
Amar Ghaman, the volunteer manager at the Fatima, which is located in a semi-industrial area north of the city centre, said there was nothing “strange going on here and nothing for the Muslim community to worry about”.
One resident of a four-storey block of flats opposite said police had advised him and other residents to evacuate on Tuesday evening.
“We went to our daughter’s for a couple of hours but then came back,” said Terry, aged 67. “Nothing has happened since the raids. I heard three loud bangs and then saw lots of police in military fatigues.
“I saw them bring one guy out. He was between two policemen so I couldn’t see him clearly.”
He described the area as a mix of different cultures. “It’s very friendly, everyone gets on,” he said. “We’ve got Somali neighbours, it’s all good.”
Around three miles south in the Meersbrook area of the city, residents said they were woken on Tuesday by police blowing open the door of a run-down terrace house as armed officers in protective gear swooped in the early hours. A further raid is understood to have happened at a property in Stocksbridge, just north of Sheffield.
Counter-terrorism teams are running about 500 live investigations involving 3,000 individuals at any one time, while there is also a wider pool of 20,000 people who were the subjects of previous inquiries.
