British police said today they had arrested 43 men on suspicion of having downloaded and distributed images of child abuse on the Internet.
The men are suspected of having accessed pay-per-view child porn websites and exchanged images of children being abused, a police spokesman said.
The arrests were made early yesterday, when some 350 officers took part in raids across London.
"A large quantity of computer equipment was seized and the men were taken for questioning at police stations across the capital," the spokesman said.
Some of the arrests were made in connection with Operation Ore, a long-running investigation into child pornography on the Internet, he said.
Operation Ore is based partly on information supplied by US authorities, which handed British police a list of over 7,000 British men suspected of using their credit cards to access pay-per-view websites containing child pornography.
The investigation has led to more than 1,300 arrests in Britain, including that of The Who guitarist Pete Townshend, who was released on bail after his arrest in January.