German authorities are stepping up security at airports and railway stations after receiving “concrete indications” that Islamist extremists plan to stage an attack in Germany toward the end of this month.

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said the government felt compelled to issue a warning of a “new threat level” after receiving intelligence from an unnamed foreign partner and gathering evidence domestically from Islamist groups.

“There is cause for concern, but no cause for hysteria,” de Maiziere told reporters today in Berlin. He said the public will begin to see an increased security presence, though “there are a large number of measures they won’t be able to see.”

The warning follows a worldwide terror alert prompted last month after bombs were found in air-cargo shipments. One bomb, packed inside a printer cartridge, was timed to explode on a flight as it reached the U.S. East Coast. That bomb, which originated in Yemen and was discovered at the U.K.’s East Midlands airport on Oct. 29, had passed through Germany via Cologne/Bonn airport.

A second bomb was found in Dubai. Both were addressed to synagogues in Chicago.

De Maiziere said Germany received additional intelligence after the incident and compared the threat level to the weeks before September 2009 federal elections, when a series of video messages emerged on the Internet warning of terror attacks in Germany. German authorities attributed those threats to an al- Qaeda-inspired campaign that aimed to influence the election, which gave Chancellor Angela Merkel a second term.

‘Islamist Scene’

Further clues came from Germany’s Federal Crime Bureau and sources in the country’s “Islamist scene,” the minister said.

A German court in March sentence four men belonging to an Islamist terrorist cell to as many as 12 years in prison for their part in a thwarted bomb attack that authorities said could have been the worst in Germany’s post-World War II history.

The group, using liquid explosives, sought primarily American targets in western German cities including Frankfurt, Cologne and Dusseldorf, as well as Ramstein Air Base, which serves as the headquarters for U.S. Air Forces in Europe.

Authorities were placed on alert earlier this month when a package containing explosives was discovered in the Federal Chancellery in Berlin, though its origin was a Greek radical group.


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