SYDNEY, Australia – Police in Australia arrested 17 terror suspects, including a prominent radical Muslim cleric, in a string of raids early today and said they had foiled a major terror attack.

The Australian Federal Police said eight men were arrested in Sydney and nine in Melbourne in the coordinated raids that also netted evidence including weapons, computers, backpacks, and apparent bomb-making materials.

“I was satisfied that this state was under an imminent threat of potentially a catastrophic terrorist act,” New South Wales’s police minister, Carl Scully, said.

Australia’s Sky News reported that a man who had been under surveillance was shot and wounded by police in the raids, which followed a 16-month investigation. Police did not immediately confirm the man was a terror suspect.

A Melbourne lawyer who said he represented eight people arrested there, Rob Stary, said most of his clients were charged with being members of a banned organization.

Police declined to give details of the likely target of the attack, but Victoria state’s police chief, Christine Nixon, said that next year’s Commonwealth Games, to be staged in Melbourne, were not a target.

“It’s the largest operation of counterterrorism that’s ever been conducted in this country,” Ms. Nixon told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Mr. Stary said one of those arrested in Melbourne was the outspoken radical Muslim cleric Abu Bakr, an Algerian-Australian who has said he would be violating his faith if he warned his students not to join the jihad, or holy war, in Iraq.

In an August interview with the ABC, Abu Bakr told the ABC he is not involved with any terror cells in Australia. However, he said he supports Al Qaeda’s aims and praised the group’s leader, Osama bin Laden.

ABC reported that Abu Bakr had been under investigation by the Australian Security Intelligence Organization, which accuses him of supporting Australian Muslims who participate in insurgencies overseas.

Australia has never been hit by a major terror attack, but its citizens have been targeted repeatedly overseas, particularly in neighboring Indonesia.

Prime Minister Howard’s opponents say his strong support for the American-led war in Iraq and decision to send troops there and to Afghanistan have made an attack on Australia inevitable.