The widow of Mohammad Siddique Khan, the ringleader of the London suicide bombers, was among four people being held tonight after anti-terror raids linked to the London bombings.

Hasina Patel, 29, her brother Arshad and two other men were detained under the Terrorism Act over suspected connections to the attacks on July 7, 2005 in which 52 London commuters were killed.

Unarmed police swooped at 7am on addresses across West Yorkshire and the West Midlands. Seven properties in Dewsbury, Batley, Beeston in south Leeds, and Birmingham were cordoned off for forensic investigation.

The raids were led by the Metropolitan Police counter terrorism unit, with support from West Midlands and West Yorkshire Police.

Two men, aged 30 and 34, were arrested in Batley and Leeds, while the third man, aged 22, was arrested at 7.25am in the Selly Oak area of Birmingham. They were Arshad Patel, Khalid Khaliq - who is thought to have connections with the Islamic bookshop Iqra in Beeston - and Imran Motala.

All four, held on suspicion of the commission, preparation, or instigation of acts of terrorism, were taken to Paddington Green high security police station in central London.

On Tempest Road in Beeston, a few hundred yards from the family home of Shehzad Tanweer, the Aldgate bomber, a police officer guarded the front door of an address while another stood guard in the back garden.

Next-door neighbour Carole Condon, 59, said that an Asian family - a mother and father, two brothers and a sister - had lived at the address for a number of years.

She said: "They were very quiet. I didn’t really know them but they would say hello. I don’t know their surname but they were always quite friendly. Their children would take the bins out into the back garden and I would say hello."

Further down Tempest Road a single police officer guarded another property, where an Asian couple and their three children are thought to live.

A neighbour, who did not wish to be named, said the same red-brick terrace house was raided and swathed in scaffolding and plastic sheets by police carrying out a forensic search in the immediate aftermath of the 7/7 bombings.

At an address in Thornhill Lees, in Dewsbury, curtains were closed and a red Vauxhall was parked in the driveway at the three-bedroom two-storey mid-terrace house.

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