COPENHAGEN: Copenhagen police said on Thursday they had detained four people on suspicion of joining the Daesh group in Syria and seized weapons and ammunition in a search linked to the arrests.

Ammunitions and weapons were found in a connected search, the police later tweeted.

“The arrests took place as part of efforts to combat people enlisting in terrorist groups in the war-torn areas in Syria and northern Iraq,” the police said in a statement on Thursday.

The police would not provide more details on the identity of or suspicions about the four, who will come before a judge for a preliminary hearing on Friday.

All four were suspected of breaking Denmark’s terrorism law while in Syria, and were arrested in the Copenhagen area, police said in a statement without giving any further information on their identities.

“The suspects have been identified through investigations carried out in close cooperation between the Danish Security and Intelligence Service and Copenhagen police,” the statement said.

Under Danish terrorism law, “letting oneself be recruited to commit acts of (terrorism)” is punishable with up to six years in jail.

“At one of the addresses we (searched) today we found some weapons and ammunition,” police inspector Poul Kjeldsen told reporters.

A person living at the address had links to one of Copenhagen’s criminal gangs, police later said on Twitter.

“The arrests took place as part of the effort against people letting themselves be recruited to terror groups in the war-torn areas in Syria and northern Iraq,” police said. A preliminary hearing was scheduled to be held on Friday.

Europe is on edge after the Paris attacks in November and last month’s bombings in Brussels, both blamed on homegrown militants radicalised and trained by Daesh.

Around 4,000 Europeans have travelled to Syria and Iraq to join extremist groups as foreign fighters, according to a study from the Hague-based International Centre for Counter-Terrorism released last week.