Hamas plot to attack Jewish sites across Europe foiled by police

European police have foiled a major Hamas plot to attack Jewish sites across the continent, with seven suspected members of the terror group arrested in raids in Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands.

The Hamas operatives were told to bring a cache of weapons, buried at an undisclosed location in Europe, to Berlin to attack Jewish institutions, German prosecutors said.

Three men arrested in Berlin, and another in the Netherlands, were preparing a weapons cache that would be “kept in a state of readiness in view of potential terrorist attacks”, they said.

Danish authorities confirmed the arrest of three people on their soil, with prime minister Mette Frederiksen describing the plans as “as serious as it gets” and confirming a link to the war in Israel and Gaza.

The suspects were allegedly planning attacks across Europe, officials said, without giving further details. Israeli officials have suggested all the arrests were linked to a single, cross-border European terror plot.

There was no immediate suggestion of a British link to the Hamas plot.

Three of the suspects arrested in Berlin are citizens of Egypt and Lebanon according to German prosecutors. The three suspects arrested in Denmark are to be charged with terror offences, according to Danish police chief inspector Flemming Drejer.

Europe has been on high alert for Hamas-linked attacks since the terror group launched the October 7 massacre.

The arrested suspects appear to have additional links with criminal gangs in Europe according to Danish police. Security patrols around Jewish sites in Denmark are being stepped up in response to the foiled plot as well as police patrols in Copenhagen

The three men arrested in Berlin, and another held in the Netherlands, were preparing a weapons cache that would be “kept in a state of readiness in view of potential terrorist attacks against Jewish institutions in Europe”, they said.

Bild, the German tabloid, named the suspects held in Berlin as Lebanese-born Abdelhamid Al A, Egyptian citizen Mohamed B and Lebanese-born Ibrahim El-R. German authorities typically withhold the surnames of criminal and terror suspects. “The three men have close ties to senior leaders of Hamas’s military wing,” Bild reported, citing sources close to the investigation.

No later than early 2023, Hamas leaders in Lebanon had tasked Abdelhamid Al A, with locating a “depot with weapons in Europe, which the organisation had covertly set up there in the past”, prosecutors said.

Abdelhamid Al A, Mohamed B and another suspect, Nazih R, “set out from Berlin several times to search for the weapons”, and were aided in their efforts by Ibrahim El-R.

Five apartments and a restaurant in Berlin were searched by police as part of the investigation. German prosecutors said that the investigation into the three suspects arrested there had been launched several months before the October 7 Hamas massacre.

The three suspects arrested in Denmark are due to appear at a closed court session on Friday. Anja Dalgaard-Nielsen, the head of Danish intelligence, said a spate of burnings of the Koran in both Denmark and neighbouring Sweden has been a factor in the heightened security risk.