KARLSRUHE, Germany — Germany said Wednesday it had arrested three Islamic extremists preparing a massive bombing campaign targeting Americans and U.S. installations in the country.
"They were planning massive attacks," Federal Prosecutor Monika Harms said.
"As possible targets ... the suspects named discotheques and pubs and airports frequented by Americans with a view to detonating explosives loaded in cars and killing or injuring many people," Harms told a press conference.
The men, two Germans and a Turk, had stockpiled more than 700 kilograms of hydrogen peroxide, the same chemical used by suicide bombers in the 2005 attacks on London's transport system which killed 56 people, Harms said.
Drums containing the chemicals were moved recently to a holiday home in the Sauerland area near Frankfurt which had been rented under a false name.
The men, in their 20s, had met up on Sunday to begin producing bombs, Harms said, but were arrested on Tuesday.
They are suspected members of Islamic Jihad Union, a group with roots in Uzbekistan that has ties to al-Qaida, and attended a training camp in Pakistan in 2006.
According to federal police chief Joerg Ziercke, they had been under surveillance since December, when one of the three was briefly detained on suspicion of spying on a U.S. military base in Hanau near Frankfurt.
The men were "driven by a hatred of U.S. citizens," Ziercke said.
About 64,000 U.S. military personnel are based in Germany, according to Pentagon figures.
German officials did not confirm radio reports that the men had been targeting Frankfurt international airport, one of Europe's busiest, and the giant U.S. military base in Ramstein.
"There were no concrete targets," Deputy Interior Minister August Hanning told journalists in Berlin. "But the German police are speculating that Frankfurt airport was one of these targets."
Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said the men were "very dangerous terrorists" who had planned their attacks on the orders of "an international network."
Schaeuble said one of the suspects had links to the Islamist scene in Neu-Ulm in southern Germany. Investigators have suspected for several years that a mosque in Neu-Ulm is used as a base for extremists planning attacks.
"The danger that international terrorism represents is a reality not only for the soldiers, police and personnel charged with the reconstruction in Afghanistan... but also inside our own country," he said later.
Chancellor Angela Merkel hailed the arrests, saying: "They show that the dangers of terrorism in Germany are not abstract, they are real."
The White House said U.S. President George W Bush had been informed of the arrests Tuesday, while the State Department confirmed it worked in "very close cooperation with the German government" on the investigation.
Some officials suggested the plot had been hatched to coincide with the sixth anniversary of the Sept 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, but German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung would only say that the threat had been "imminent."
The anti-terrorist operation in Germany came after police in Denmark said Tuesday they had foiled a terrorist attack after arresting eight men they said had links to al-Qaida.
Germany, which has about 3,000 soldiers serving in Afghanistan, has been on high alert for several months.
Islamist groups warned Germany earlier this year that it faced attacks unless it withdrew its troops from Afghanistan.
The U.S. embassy in Germany said in April it was increasing security at U.S. facilities in the country in response to "a heightened threat situation."
U.S. counter-terrorism officials revealed subsequently that authorities had intelligence suggesting Islamic extremists were planning to attack U.S. targets in Germany with bombs and small arms.
German federal prosecutors in June charged a Lebanese man with masterminding a failed plot to bomb two passenger trains using bombs packed in suitcases last year which failed to explode because of faulty detonators.
Six Lebanese men are currently standing trial in Lebanon over the plot, which targeted trains in western Germany.
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