ROME, Dec. 2 (Xinhua) -- Italian anti-terrorist police on Tuesday arrested two suspected Moroccan members of al-Qaeda who were planning attacks on targets on the outskirts of Milan, Italian News Agency ANSA reported.

    Police said Rachid Ilhami, 31, and Gafir Abdelkader, 42, had planned attacks on a supermarket, a night club car park, and two police stations.

    Wiretaps revealed the men had initially planned to use a van packed with explosives but then decided to use oxygen cylinders after searching and downloading bomb-making information from the Internet.

    The two men had revealed their links to al-Qaeda during their conversations, police said. Police are also checking a total of 10contacts of the Moroccans, who attended an Islamic cultural centerin the town of Macherio, where Ilhami worked as a preacher.

    Small groups of fundamentalists met at the center of the town in the evenings after the day's official sermons were finished, investigators said.

    Both Ilhami and Abdelkader are thought to have lived in Italy for several years, said the police.

    Last year police officials warned possible attacks in Italy by north African terror groups linked to al-Qaeda after a number of arrests in Lombardy, a northern region of Italy.

    In November last year, police arrested 20 people in a crackdown against a suspected Islamic terrorist cell in Milan accused of recruiting would-be suicide bombers and sending them to Iraq and Afghanistan.