In what apparently was the most recent Web attack by the 'Anonymous' group of hackers, a number of Swedish government and banking websites - including the website of the central bank - went offline on Friday.

The web attacks in Sweden had the 'Anonymous' hackers first hitting the website the country's central bank - the riksbank. se website - on early Friday afternoon, when the website went offline after being flooded by traffic. Later, the attack extended to the websites of the Swedish Security Service and the Swedish Prosecutors' Office, making them unavailable by around 1330 GMT.

The members of the 'Anonymous' hacking outfit taking credit for the web attacks in Sweden had warned about the Friday attacks in a YouTube video posted a day earlier. The video said that the Friday-scheduled attack - dubbed #OpPRQ #OpPirateBay - would be carried out in the name of The Pirate Bay and Wikileaks editor Julian Assange; and would be "the biggest thing ever done in anonymous history."

The video also urged all Internet activists to ensure their participation in what the hackers said would be "major attacks on several vital Web portals that represents Swedish society."

About the reason behind the web attacks, the 'Anonymous' member who posted the YouTube video said that the attacks were motivated by a police raid on a Sweden-based Internet service provider which hosts file-sharing sites.