BERLIN, Jan 17: Amidst heightened terror alert in Europe, Germany has stepped up security measures in the central railway stations of Berlin and in Dresden following information from foreign intelligence agencies that they could be targeted for attacks by radical islamists.
Germany’s intelligence services have received warnings from several partner services abroad in the past few days that suspected jihadists are planning attacks on the the two railway stations as well as on the weekly anti-Islam demonstrations in Dresden, TV network ZDF reported.
The terror warnings are not linked to the arrests of two Turkish men during a pre-dawn raid of eleven houses in different parts of Berlin yesterday or to last week’s terror attacks in Paris that left 17 people dead, the report said.
Foreign intelligence services issued their warnings on the basis of information gathered by tapping telephone and e-mails communications between suspected islamist militants, who are known to the authorities and international terror networks.
At least one of the persons involved had stayed in an east European country after the attacks in Paris, the report said.
Germany’s interior ministry neither confirmed or denied the report. Security authorities have been receiving a number of indications from different sources since the terror attacks in Paris.
All indications are examined carefully and serious warnings will be investigated speedily, a spokesman said.
German authorities have until now maintained that even though the security services are on a high alert since the attacks in Paris, they have no concrete information about plans for a terror attack in this country.
Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said yesterday that the situation is “quite serious and there are reasons for concern, but not for panic”.
Two men of Turkish origin arrested in Berlin yesterday
are suspected of supporting the Islamic State (IS) terror group in Syria and in Iraq and preparing a major terror attack in Syria.
The state prosecutor in Berlin charged that they recruited fighters for the IS forces in Syria as well as financed and supported their travel.
A spokesman for the state prosecutor’s office said it has no indications of any plans for terror attacks by the two men in Germany.
Their arrests are also not linked to the attacks in Paris.
In Belgium, security authorities said they foiled an attempt by suspected islamist militants to carry out a major attack by arresting 13 people during a series of anti-terror raids in different parts of the country on Thursday.
They were planning to kill several policemen in the street and at a police station and an attack was “imminent”, a spokesman for the state prosecutor’s office said in Brussels.
Two suspected islamist militants were killed and another injured during the raid at a house in Verviers, near the German border.
Police said they found a large cache of guns, ammunition and explosives as well as several police uniforms during the raids.
Meanwhile, a magistrate in Karlsruhe, in southern Germany, issued an arrest warrant yesterday against a suspected German islamist of Tunisian origin, who had returned at the end of August after staying three months in Syria.
He was arrested in Wolfsburg on Thursday on charges of joining a terrorist organisation.
The Federal prosecutor said he had joined the IS group and took part in its training. He is also charged with recruiting fighters for IS. (AGENCIES)
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