Police forces across England and Wales took part in the biggest ever international operation against Internet paedophiles on Wednesday morning.

The investigation, dubbed Operation Landmark, has successfully identified 12 suspected paedophiles in the UK. At 06:00 GMT, the National Crime Squad (NCS) coordinated dawn raids on the 12 British targets, and computers and software were seized as evidence.

Nineteen countries were involved in the operation, which resulted in the execution of 130 search warrants throughout the night. The dawn swoops are reported to have discovered 60,000 images of child pornography.

Inspector Terry Jones at Greater Manchester's Obscene Publications Unit was involved in the home raid of one target located in his force's region. "We have been looking at our target for a few months -- we executed a search warrant on his house at 6am, and have recovered a computer, floppies and CDs," he said. "We have definite evidence of child abuse images."