The police are reinvestigating almost 120 solved murder cases across England and Wales as they suspect they could have been "honour killings," it emerged today.

Detectives from Scotland Yard are looking at 52 cases in the London area and 65 cases in other parts of England and Wales. Some of the cases are ten years old.

Many of the murder victims came from south Asian communities, although there were also African, Arabic and European victims.

Most of the victims were women.

The Metropolitan police is due to submit its findings to a conference of Europol at The Hague later today. Europol is the European centre for handling criminal intelligence.

A spokeswoman for Scotland Yard said: "We want to try to see what the scale of the problem is across Europe, and also to see how other countries deal with it.

"This is a learning process."

Scotland Yard detectives hope that a fresh look at the crimes – almost all of which have already been solved – will help them learn more about the scale and nature of the problem.

Many of those who died were women who had been involved in relationships which their families felt brought dishonour on them, the spokeswoman for Scotland Yard said.

Some of the crimes were carried out by contract killers hired by the victim's families.

But police believe that some of the other murders involve so-called "bounty hunters," people who make a living from tracking down victims.

The Europol conference in The Hague is designed to raise awareness of the problem and to look at ways in which it can be tackled across Europe.

As many as 5,000 women become the victims of honour killings around the world each year. In 2002, there were at least 12 honour killings in the UK.

In September, a Kurdish Muslim man confessed to killing his 16-year-old daughter for sleeping with her boyfriend.

Abdalla Yones stabbed his daughter, Heshu, at least 11 times and cut her throat with a kitchen knife at their flat in Acton, west London. He was jailed for life.

After the Yones trial, Commander Andy Baker, of the Metropolitan Police's Specialist Crime Directorate, said that a clash of cultures motivated honour killings, as tradition-minded members of various ethnic groups found it hard to come to terms with the Western society that their children were growing up in.

He added that one of the biggest problems the police faced was getting witnesses from ethnic minorities to speak out against members of their communities.

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