Police cordoned off the Århus home of the cartoonist Kurt Westergaard and evacuated the area after a suspicious package was observed outside his home.

Eastern Jutland police say that the package measured 20 by 40 was on the stairs in front of the artist’s home.

“Kurt Westergaard has been evacuated,” says Superintendant Mogens Brøndum adding that neighbours to a distance of 100 metres - some 25 households - had also been evacuated.

After the bomb squad had dealt with the package, police cordons were removed from the area. It is not yet known what the package contained and investigatioins continue.

The incident comes in the wake of recent disclosures of the arrests in Chicago, IL. earlier this month of two men who are alleged to have conspired to carry out attacks in Denmark. Among other targets, the conspiracy is said to have included attempts on Westergaard and the Culture Editor of the Jyllands-Posten newspaper Flemming Rose, who commissioned a series of cartoons, some of which depicted the Prophet Mohammed. Publication of the cartoons caused widespread condemnation, and in some cases violence, in the Islamic world.