Norway's police have confirmed that the Danish cartoonist who caricatured the Prophet Mohammed in his drawings left the country Monday.

Kurt Westergaard was in Norway to launch a book with his illustrations Tuesday, but he left a day before the planned event. Heart problems were cited for his early departure.

Norwegian news reports say the cartoonist who is condemned by the Muslim world left after security services warned him of a planned terror attack against him.

Norwegian daily newspaper Dagbladet reported Saturday that a suspect, who is in his 30s, was detained Tuesday after Norwegian intelligence discovered that Westergaard was the target of an assassination plot involving automatic weapons and explosives.

The police would not confirm the Dagbladet report.

But the 76-year-old cartoonists has been targeted by several murder attempts and frequent death threats after his controversial cartoons of the prophet appeared in the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten in 2005.

The cartoons triggered massive protests in Muslim countries because Islam bans any depictions of the prophet.