The police in Germany have arrested three teenagers on suspicion of planning an Islamist-motivated terror attack.
Prosecutors said the teenagers, two girls aged 15 and 16 and a 15-year-old boy, were arrested as they were “strongly suspected of planning an Islamist-motivated terror attack and of having committed to carrying it out”.
A statement by the prosecutor on Friday said the three teenagers from Dusseldorf region are believed to have been planning crimes of “murder and manslaughter,” as well as preparing “a serious act of violence endangering the state.”
The state’s Central Office for the Prosecution of Terrorism sought an arrest warrant for the teenagers over the Easter holiday.
They had formed a chat group and had not set a date or place for the attack, but investigators said they “certainly saw the danger.”
The trio were allegedly planning to carry out attacks on worshippers in churches and on police stations using knives and Molotov cocktails in following the ideology of the ISIS group.
The teenagers were also weighing whether to obtain firearms, the mass circulation daily reported.
German authorities arrested three people in January over an alleged plot to attack the cathedral in Cologne on New Year’s Eve.
Last month, police detained two Afghan citizens linked to ISIL for allegedly planning to attack police near the Swedish parliament in response to the burning of copies of the Quran.
Police in northern Germany said on Thursday they were offering a 5,000-euro ($5,330) reward for providing information concerning an arson attack on a synagogue in the city of Oldenburg last week.
