Oct. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Danish police arrested four people suspected of plotting a terrorist attack in the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, where arrests in the case were made last week.

The four males, whose ages range from 16 to 20, were detained in the Copenhagen suburb of Glostrup and will be held pending a hearing Nov. 16, Detective Chief Superintendent Steen Skovgaard said today in a telephone interview. He declined to comment on the Danish Ritzau newswire's report that the suspects planned to bomb the U.S. Embassy or U.K. Embassy in Sarajevo.

Danish intelligence and security have been stepped up since the Nordic country was singled out after the July 7 London bombings as an al-Qaeda target. Denmark, like the U.K., is in the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq.

The suspects had ``suspicious technical equipment,'' though police didn't find explosives during searches, Skovgaard said. They grew up in Denmark and have Middle Eastern backgrounds, he said, declining to give details. One of the four may have ``only a weak link to the case,'' he said.

Skovgaard declined to give details of the attack the four are suspected of planning in Sarajevo, saying only, ``They were very close to committing an act of terror and we think there is a connection between these four men and the arrests in the Balkans.'' Bosnian police last week arrested a Swede, a Turk and a Bosnian suspected of plotting an attack in Sarajevo, AFP said.

``This is, of course, a very serious case and it is shocking that there exist circumstances that require arrests of such a nature in Denmark,'' Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen today told the television network of Danmarks Radio 1.

Denmark has about 500 soldiers stationed in the southern Iraqi region of Basra. Rasmussen has been called a ``steadfast'' ally by U.S. President George W. Bush, and Denmark was the only country Bush visited in July on his way to Scotland for a meeting of the Group of Eight industrialized nations.

To contact the reporter on this story: Tasneem Brogger in Copenhagen at at tbrogger@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: October 28, 2005 07:53 EDT