600 detained in Pak militant crackdown

In the ongoing raids, police and security agencies were on the look-out for more suspects across all four provinces and in the Pakistan-administered part of Kashmir, the Himalayan state also claimed by India, they said.

Of those arrested, 295 belonged to militant groups banned by President Pervez Musharraf in the past three years.

"They have been held under the Anti Terrorism Act, which gives police authority to keep them under detention for a year without indicting them before a court," a senior interior ministry official told AFP.

The remaining 300 detainees included clerics, mosque prayer leaders and others taken into custody for inciting anti-Western and sectarian hatred through sermons and provocative literature, he said.

"The campaign against militancy and extremism is ongoing, and the police is on alert to nab elements promoting extremism and violence," the official said.

Police launched the raids after British Prime Minister Tony Blair urged Pakistan to move against radical madrasas or Islamic schools following news that some of the London bombers had recently visited the South Asian country.

Pakistani officials have denied the crackdown is linked to the attacks in London, which killed at least 52 people and the four British suicide bombers, three of whom were of Pakistani origin.

Musharraf, a key ally in the US-led 'war on terror', has repeatedly vowed to curb extremism in Pakistan, which played a frontline role in the 1979-1989 anti Soviet jihad in Afghanistan and the 2001 US-led invasion of that country.

Since assuming power in a bloodless coup in October 1999, General Musharraf has tried to curb extremism by banning 10 militant groups.

The parties Musharraf outlawed in 2003 were Islami Tehreek Pakistan, Millat-e-Islami Pakistan and Khudamul Islam.

In January 2002 the military ruler also banned Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad along, along with three other extremist organisations: the Sunni militant group Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, the Shia militant group Tehreek-i-Jafria Pakistan and Tehreek-i-Nifaz-e Shariat Mohammadi.

Earlier in August 2001 he banned Sunni militant group Lashkar-i-Jhangvi and its Shia counterpart, Sipah-e-Mohammad.

The government has also put the Jamaatul Dawa party on a watch list under the country's tough Anti Terrorist Act.