Police guard in front of a house in Eisenhuettenstadt, Germany, Wednesday Aug. 17, 2016. German police arrested a man Wednesday after finding explosives during a raid on his apartment and authorities said he is suspected of planning an attack. The suspect is a 27-year-old German man who lived in the eastern city of Eisenhuettenstadt, Frankfurt an der Oder police told the dpa news agency. Brandenburg governor Dietmar Woidke said police suspect the man of “planning an act of terrorism” and that he might have contacts to Islamic extremism, dpa reported. (Patrick Pleul/dpa via AP)
Republished August 17, 2016 - 9:24 AM
Original Publication Date August 17, 2016 - 5:50 AM
BERLIN - German police on Wednesday searched the home of a 27-year-old man on suspicion he had explosives stored there but found only firecrackers and no indications he was planning an attack, they said.
Police told local broadcaster RBB that the suspicion the German man from the eastern city of Eisenhuettenstadt might have been planning an attack "hadn't solidified."
The man was arrested earlier Wednesday when Brandenburg state governor Dietmar Woidke said he was suspected of "planning an act of terrorism."
It wasn't immediately clear if he would remain in detention after the search of his apartment turned up only firecrackers and no evidence of a planned attack, the dpa news agency reported.
The incident comes after a string of attacks in Germany last month that put the country on edge.
Two of the attacks in a weeklong period starting July 18 were the first in Germany to be claimed by the Islamic State group: an axe rampage near Wuerzburg that wounded five and a bombing that injured 15 outside a bar in Ansbach. Both attackers, asylum-seekers who arrived over the past two years, were killed.
In two other attacks Islamic extremism was not suspected. Those attacks include the shooting by a German-Iranian 18-year-old in Munich that claimed the life of the assailant and nine others, and the fatal stabbing of a woman by a Syrian asylum-seeker at a restaurant in Reutlingen.
News from © The Associated Press, 2016