Australian police arrest 15 terror suspects

Police in Australia arrested 15 terror suspects in a string of raids in the early hours of Tuesday and said they had foiled a major terror attack.

“I’m satisfied that we have disrupted what I would regard as the final stages of a large scale terrorist attack … here in Australia,” New South Wales Police Commissioner Ken Moroney told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.

Moroney said 400 officers, including federal and state police, were involved in raids in Sydney that captured six men while nine more suspects were picked up in the southern city of Melbourne.

Police declined to give details of the likely target of the attack, but Victoria state police chief Christine Nixon said that next year’s Commonwealth Games, to be staged in Melbourne, were not a target.

Melbourne lawyer Rob Stary said he represented eight people arrested in the city, most of whom he said had been charged with being members of a banned organisations.