At least six doctors or medical students were among the eight under arrest last night over plots to bring death and carnage to London and Glasgow.

One of the men, a Jordanian, is a neurosurgeon who had recently been promoted to registrar. Another doctor, 27, also a registrar, was in custody last night in Brisbane, Australia. He worked at a hospital on the Gold Coast, south of Brisbane, but is not Australian.

Two other men, aged 28 and 25, were arrested at a hospital near Glasgow late on Sunday night.

Bilal Talal Samad Abdulla, an Iraqi doctor, who qualified in Baghdad in 2004 as the anti-American insurgency gathered pace, was named as one of the two suspects in the Jeep attack on Glasgow airport on Saturday. He works at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley. He is the second doctor to be named as a suspect after Mohammed Asha, 26, was arrested on the M6 with his wife, Marwah, on Saturday evening. Dr Asha is a Jordanian of Palestinian descent who works as a neurologist at the University of North Staffordshire, Stoke-on-Trent. Last night police began digging up the back garden of his house in Newcastle-under-Lyme.

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The two unnamed suspects arrested on Sunday night were said to be medical students, both of Middle Eastern origin, who had been working in Scotland, but there was no official confirmation of that. Sources told The Times that they had links to the Royal Alexandra, but did not elaborate.

The men were arrested after “intensive police operations” in Paisley. Armed officers ringed the hospital, searched an accommodation block for doctors and other medical staff and carried out two controlled explosions on vehicles in the grounds. The Metropolitan Police have now taken over the Scottish inquiry.

Six people are in custody in Britain and another suspect — the driver of the Jeep — is under armed guard and in critical condition in the Royal Alexandra. Police have been given an extension until Saturday to question three suspects held at Paddington Green police station in West London.

None of the suspects were previously known to MI5 or the police.

Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, told the Commons yesterday afternoon that 19 locations including homes and hospital premises had been searched as part of a “fast-moving inquiry”.

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