German police arrest teenagers ‘planning Islamic State-style terror attack on churches’

From the German edition of the Local and the Telegraph

German police have detained two teenage boys and two teenage girls on suspicion of planning an Islamic State-style knife and firebomb attack on churches. Three of the four suspects, all teenagers aged 15 to 16, were arrested in North Rhine-Westphalia and are “strongly suspected of planning an Islamist-motivated terror attack and having committed to carrying it out” according to prosecutors in Dusseldorf.

The fourth suspect, aged 16, was arrested in Stuttgart on “suspicion that he was preparing a serious crime endangering the state”, prosecutors there said.

Bild, the German tabloid, said the group had been planning to attack Christians in churches as well as police officers, adding that they were supporters of Islamic State. Bild (further) reported that the youths were allegedly planning to carry out Molotov cocktail and knife attacks in the name of the Islamic state group.

The suspects were also weighing whether to obtain firearms.

The assault was in an early stage of planning, according to German media reports, which suggested the potential targets were in Dusseldorf, Dortmund and Cologne.

It was not immediately clear whether the alleged plot had any links with Isis-K, an offshoot of IS that was behind the terrorist attack on a concert hall in Moscow in March.