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German police have allegedly stopped several planned terrorist attacks against Christmas markets.
Two suspected Islamists were arrested on Tuesday, another was arrested on November 21.
In 2016, 13 Christmas market visitors died in a terrorist attack in Berlin.
The popular Christmas markets in Germany, which attract many Swedish visitors, are organized everywhere in the country during the month of December.
On 19 December 2016, 13 Christmas market-goers died and 67 were injured at the Gedächtningskirche in Berlin, when Islamist terrorist Anis Amri drove a truck into the crowd at a Christmas market. Four days later, Amri was shot dead by police in northern Italy. The terrorist organization IS claimed responsibility for the act.
Now, new planned acts of terror against German Christmas markets have been revealed, according to German police.
On Tuesday, a 15-year-old German-Afghan and a 16-year-old German-Chechen were arrested, who, according to the German police, are IS sympathizers and planned to carry out a terrorist attack against a Christmas market in Opladen, 15 kilometers north of Cologne. writes the news site Westdeutscher Rundfunk.
According to prosecutors in Düsseldorf, the teenagers planned to kill visitors at the Opladener Weihnachtsdorf in early December by setting off a gasoline explosion in a small truck.
The investigators also state that the two arrested planned to go to Afghanistan after the terrorist attack, and join IS Khorasan.
The 15-year-old is now in custody, while the 16-year-old – who is said to have health problems – is being held in a hospital prison.
On November 21, a third suspected terrorist was arrested. It concerns a 20-year-old Iraqi who was arrested in Helmstedt in Lower Saxony.
He is also suspected of planning a terrorist attack.
According to the news site Norddeutscher Rundfunk, NDR, “it is likely that the target of the attack is the Christmas market in Hanover”. NDR states that the arrested intended to carry out the terrorist attack to support the terrorist organization IS.
-People in Lower Saxony do not need to be afraid to visit Christmas markets, says the state’s interior minister Daniela Behrens after the arrest.
Germany’s public prosecutor states that 356 preliminary investigations into Islamist terrorism were opened in the country during the first nine months of the year. That is almost twice as many cases as in 2022, according to NDR.