Germany: Terror alert as election nears

BERLIN, Sept. 25 (UPI) -- The United States and Britain have issued travel alerts for Germany because of a heightened terror threat in connection with Sunday's federal elections.

The U.S. State Department posted the alert, valid until Nov. 11, on its Web site Wednesday; it ranks Germany as one of six countries potentially dangerous to visit because "al-Qaida has threatened it will conduct terrorist attacks in Germany immediately prior to and following the federal elections on Sept. 27."

The British Foreign Office posted a similar message, with both referencing a video recently published by al-Qaida that directly threatened Germany with attacks.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the rival of Chancellor Angela Merkel in this Sunday's election, said tourists should not be overly concerned.

"I have not been able to ascertain a reason for a travel alert," Steinmeier said Thursday in Berlin.

But German authorities have tightened security here, with an increased number of heavily armed police dispatched to airports, train stations and public places across the country

Mass daily Bild reports that the Central Intelligence Agency has intercepted and forwarded to Berlin several radio messages by al-Qaida. They contain evidence that the group is planning to attack a passenger plane with a small and portable ground-air missile or a remote-controlled small model aircraft loaded with explosives, the daily writes. The airports in Duesseldorf and Frankfurt, the second-largest in Europe, are especially at risk.

"We don't know when and where -- but it is highly likely that something will happen," Bild quotes an unnamed German security expert as saying.

Experts fear that Germany will experience an attack similar to the one that rocked Madrid five years ago. Three days before the federal election there in 2004, terrorists placed bombs in several commuter trains, killing 191 people and wounding more than 1,800.

Germany's elections are due this Sunday, and a recent video threat by a German Islamist inside al-Qaida warned Germans of a terror attack if they did not vote against the parties who support Germany's military contribution to the NATO-led military mission in Afghanistan.

"If the German people decide in favor of continuing the war they will have handed down their own sentence," Bekkay Harrach, the German Islamist, said in the video.

Meanwhile, police Friday in Stuttgart arrested a 25-year-old Turkish national who is suspected to have posted an Islamist video message on the Internet.