Germany says terrorist-attack danger high (2nd Roundup)

Jun 22, 2007, 16:11 GMT

Berlin - Germany's Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said Friday it was conceivable that Islamic terrorists would conduct suicide bombings in Germany.

'Unfortunately we have to regard it as possible,' he said.

Officials under his authority had earlier told media they were concerned at evidence coming from the front in the war against the Taliban, including the arrests in Pakistan of at least two Islamists from Germany.

A Foreign Ministry spokesman in Berlin disclosed that a convoy of German diplomats had came under attack outside the Afghan capital Kabul on Saturday. Nobody was hurt but a vehicle was seriously damaged.

He said he could give no more details because an inquiry was still under way.

Two German nationals had been arrested in Pakistan as part of an anti-terrorism inquiry, federal police chief Joerg Ziercke said Friday in Wiesbaden, Germany.

The president of the BKA Federal Crime Agency said that police were waiting for details on a third arrest that had taken place in Pakistan. One of those held had been identified in Germany as 'dangerous,' he added.

A state official in the nearby city Mainz identified one of those arrested as a man of immigrant background who lived in the southern Palatinate region of Germany.

'Federal authorities are on heightened alert and have taken appropriate measures,' said the Interior Ministry in Berlin.

Thomas Steg, the German government deputy spokesman, stressed that there was no intelligence about a particular attack, but security agencies had to respond to general signals.

Officials said the main threat was to German soldiers and aid workers in Afghanistan.

Last month, a suicide bomber blew himself up in a market in Kunduz, northern Afghanistan, killing three Germans and five Afghans.

A newspaper, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, had said earlier on its website that the spotlight was on Pakistan-bound Islamists who were either German nationals or aliens who had grown up in Germany.