BRITISH police said they have arrested a "radicalised" convert to Islam after he was injured in a bomb explosion in a city centre in south-west England today.
The centre of Exeter was evacuated after the lunchtime blast at a restaurant in a shopping centre and bomb disposal experts and sniffer dogs were sent in.
Police later named the 22-year-old, who suffered cuts to his eye and facial burns in the explosion and remains in police custody, as Nicky Reilly, a man with a history of mental illness.
Reilly has not yet been charged with any offences, but police said they had raided an address in nearby Plymouth linked to him and were searching it.
Deputy Chief Constable Tony Melville said police inquiries suggested Reilly had adopted Islam and was "preyed upon and radicalised".
No one else was injured in the explosion although there were about 15 people in the restaurant at the time.
Chief Constable Stephen Otter earlier confirmed that there were "two explosive devices found at the scene".
"The injured man had one of the explosive devices on him, which partially went off. The other, in the vicinity of the restaurant, did not go off," Chief Otter said.
Both Deputy Chief Melville and Chief Otter said it was too early to determine the motive behind the incident.
A 19-year-old Muslim convert was arrested last month in Bristol in western England and charged with explosives and extremism offences, although there was no immediate suggestion that the events in Exeter were connected to his case.
Britain has been on heightened alert since suicide bombings in July 2005 which killed 56 people on three London underground trains and a bus.
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