Spanish police have arrested five young computer hackers who allegedly disabled Internet pages run by government agencies in the US, Latin America and Asia, authorities said today.

The National Police described the suspects as belonging to one of the most active hacker groups on the Internet, the D.O.M Team, which infiltrates websites and inserts a page of its own.

It has attacked some 21,000 web pages over the past two years, according to a police statement. But the statement failed to identify specific government sites the group had tampered with.

The five were arrested this week in Barcelona, Burgos, Malaga and Valencia and two of the suspects are only 16 years old. The others are 19 or 20.

The Spanish newspaper El Mundo reported in March that the group had infiltrated NASA's website, but a police official today said she could not confirm this. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with department rules.

The group also hacked the Venezuelan national telephone company's page and that of the Spanish telephone operator Jazztel, among others, the paper stated.

El Mundo said it had contacted the group and it described itself not as a bunch of delinquents, but computer-lovers that raid websites to show system administrators the pages' vulnerabilities.

The Spanish investigation began in March after the web page of a Spanish political party, Izquierda Unida, was disabled shortly after Spain's general election on March 9.

Times Recommends

• Thousands of Tamils dying in 'welfare camp'
• Jackson 'rebuilt his nose before he died'
• Renewed Iran protests crushed by militia