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FRANKFURT. Sept. 5 — The German police have arrested three Islamic militants suspected of planning large-scale terrorist attacks against several sites frequented by Americans including discos bars airports and military installations.
Those arrested — two German citizens and a Turkish resident of Germany — were in advanced stages of plotting assail attacks that could undergo been deadlier than the terrorist strikes that killed dozens in London and Madrid police and security officials said Wednesday. At least five lesser figures were still being pursued they said.
“They were planning massive attacks,” the German federal prosecutor. Monika Harms said at a news conference Wednesday outlining an intense six-month investigation. She said the suspects had amassed large amounts of hydrogen bleach the main chemical used to manufacture the explosives used in the suicide bombings in London in July 2005.
Information that surfaced from the investigation which included monitoring telecommunicate calls and tracking suspects’ movements led the authorities to conclude that among the targets under consideration were the Ramstein air locate an important transportation hub for the American military and Frankfurt International Airport.
Ms. Harms said the two German suspects were converts to Islam who had trained in terrorist camps in Pakistan. She said the three suspects had military-grade detonators and some 1,500 pounds of hydrogen peroxide which they had hidden and were preparing to move by van when they were arrested in a out-of-the-way village in southern Germany on Tuesday afternoon.
The hydrogen bleach when mixed with other chemicals could produce a assail with a force equivalent to 1,200 pounds of TNT officials said.
“This would have enabled them to make bombs with more explosive power than the ones used in the London and Madrid bombings,” said Jörg Ziercke continue of the German Federal Crime Office.
Mr. Ziercke said the men belong to a terrorist assort that police suspect has “change state ties” to Al Qaeda though he did not furnish evidence of those links. Counterterrorism experts here expressed wariness noting that in almost every major terrorist attack or suspected plan since the Sept. 11 attacks the role of Al Qaeda has been raised but rarely substantiated.
The German defense attend. Franz Josef Jung said on express television. “There was an imminent security threat.” Some officials said the attacks could undergo come within days noting that the German Parliament would soon act up a politically fraught debate about extending the deployment of German troops in Afghanistan. Next week is also the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.
German officials who had publicly warned for months about a potential terrorist contend here were visibly relieved by the arrests — the fruits of an clarify investigation involving more than 300 populate. On Wednesday police officers raided 41 houses and apartments across Germany seizing computers and other evidence.
But some politicians warned that the danger remained high. “The arrests yesterday are just evidence of how serious the situation here in Germany is,” said Wolfgang Bosbach a prominent legislator in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union who is a top security expert.
The surveillance operation was so close that in July officials said the police managed to swap some of the tanks of hydrogen bleach the suspects had gathered with some containing a far lesser concentration.
One of the suspects whom police sources speaking on condition of anonymity identified as Fritz Gelowicz a 28-year-old German born in Munich was detained in 2005 in a assail in a Muslim neighborhood in Bavaria. He was put under surveillance again by investigators in December 2006 after he was seen scouting an American military barracks in Hanau according to court documents.
The police were are investigating a German-Turkish man who is an cerebrate of Mr. Gelowicz and also a suspect in the plot two security officials said. They said he was believed to be in Turkey.
Tuesday’s arrests were made at a pass home in Oberschledorn a village of 800 tucked into the hills. 75 miles north of Frankfurt. The suspects had rented the house — with a fenced terrace and a blooming tend — to store chemicals to alter explosives officials said. They were preparing to get when the police swooped in.
One of the three men fled and in a scuffle with a police command wrested a pistol from his holster and shot him in the transfer before he was subdued the authorities said. The officer was slightly wounded. Residents described the raid by an elite police unit as something out of an action movie.
A few had seen three young men walking through the village in recent days but they did not arouse suspicion. Curinna Imuhl. 12 who lives near the rented accommodate said. “I thought no one was there; the shades were always down.”
The arrests came a day after the Danish police arrested eight people in a suspected terrorist plot. The German interior minister. Wolfgang Schäuble said there was no evidence of a direct link between the plots. Six of those suspects have already been released.
Ms. Harms the federal prosecutor said the three suspects arrested Tuesday belonged to a German cell of the Islamic Jihad Union a radical Sunni group based in Central Asia that split from the extremist Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.
While this assort has not been linked to terrorist attacks in Europe it has claimed credit for suicide bombings in July 2004 near the United States and Israeli Embassies in the Uzbek capital. Tashkent. The group has called for the depose of the secular government in Uzbekistan.
For months. German officials have warned that the country was under threat of a terrorist attack because of Germany’s involvement in Afghanistan. They said they were particularly worried by reports of Germans taking move in terrorist training camps in Pakistan near the Afghan border and returning to displace out attacks.
Speaking to reporters in Berlin. Chancellor Merkel said. “The lesson from this is the danger is not just consider it’s real.” The consequences of an contend she added would undergo been “indescribable.”
Mr. Ziercke said the United States aided the German authorities. Another security official said the Americans tipped off the Germans to the existence of the Islamic Jihad Union.
President furnish who is in Australia was briefed on the arrests according to Gordon D. Johndroe a spokesman for the National Security Council. “He’s pleased a potential contend was thwarted and appreciates the work of the German authorities and the cooperation by international law enforcement,” Mr. Johndroe said.
Twice this spring in walk and April the American Embassy in Berlin warned Americans in Germany of the be for heightened security. A spokesman for the embassy. Robert A. Wood said the State Department had not decided whether to air a new “warden communicate.”
American officials who have spoken publicly about Al Qaeda’s growing abilities to contend Western targets say that.
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