Germany Says Terror Attack Threat Heightened

June 22, 2007 — -- The German government has received intelligence reports that suggest Islamist militants are again planning to commit suicide attacks on European or U.S. soil, German officials tell ABC News.

German citizens were urged to be vigilant.

The warning was the result of recent German and U.S. intelligence data, officials say.

Parliament member Wolfgang Bosbach, who is German Chancellor Angela Merkel's security expert, told ABCNEWS.com, "We can no longer assume the terror threat by Islamic militants to be 'abstract.' There is clear evidence of concrete threats not only in Europe, but in particular in Germany."

Bosbach explained that German authorities considered the video broadcast by ABC News on Monday, which showed a Taliban military commander introducing suicide teams assigned to carry out attacks in the United States, Canada, Germany and Great Britain, was yet another mosaic stone in the Islamist terrorist picture. "We're not alone in this," Bosbach said, "but the danger is very real."

So much so that German Interior Ministry spokesman Christian Sachs told reporters at a news conference in Berlin today that "German security authorities have increased their vigilance and have taken extra measures to meet a potential threat by Islamic suicide bombers."

In a follow-up to ABC News' exclusive report about suicide bomb teams vowing to attack targets in countries like Germany, local TV station N-TV reported today that Pakistani authorities had arrested three would-be attackers at a border crossing with Afghanistan.

N-TV, citing high ranking sources within the German Interior Ministry, reported that Pakistani officers had found two German passports on the men when they were arrested.

The TV station also quoted German intelligence sources reporting "at least 10-12 'potential would-be terrorists'" had left Germany recently to travel to Pakistan and Afghanistan to join terrorist training camps there.

Bosbach, when contacted by ABC News, could not elaborate any further, but he confirmed that Pakistani authorities had indeed arrested "three men with German background they considered dangerous, when these men attempted to travel back to Germany."

He also added that as recent as last weekend a German embassy convoy was attacked near Kabul. A vehicle was destroyed, but nobody was injured.

Germany has around 3,000 troops serving in Afghanistan as part of NATO peacekeeping forces.

"The atmosphere reminds me of that during the summer of 2001," August Hanning, secretary of state in the German Interior Ministry, said in Berlin. "We also saw some hints of the same kind then and then there was 9/11. There certainly is no need for the public to panic but there is definitely good reason to call for people's vigilance."

Hanning's boss, German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schauble, told German TV, "The threat needs to be taken seriously. We have information that attacks, as we saw recently in Afghanistan, could happen on German soil, too."