Germany warns of al-Qaida attacks

BERLIN, Feb. 8 (UPI) -- Germany's security officials are convinced that al-Qaida is planning terror attacks in Germany.

German investigators for quite some time now have observed an upsurge in radical messages on Islamist Web sites citing Germany as a terror target, daily Die Welt said in an article. More clues are being gathered near the Afghan-Pakistani border, the newspaper said.

"There, the decision has been made that attacks should be launched against Germany," Die Welt quotes the deputy head of the German Federal Criminal Office, or BKA, as saying. German authorities are observing some 70 Islamists day and night out of fear that they may be planning terror attacks.

August Hanning, a top security official in the German Interior Ministry, told the newspaper that attack plans like the one foiled last September may one day succeed. Hanning said German authorities had managed to foil several attack plans, but that may not work a "ninth or tenth" time, he added.

In September 2007 German authorities arrested three men who planned to carry out massive, casualty-heavy bombings against U.S. institutions and other targets in Germany that could have been more deadly than the Madrid and London attacks, officials said.