HAMBURG, Germany, Aug. 26 (UPI) -- More than 1,000 police officers on Thursday and Friday took part in a wide-ranging search for three potential terrorists in Hamburg.
A witness Wednesday night at a bus stop near a railway station had overheard three men -- speaking in Arabic -- talking about "heroism before Allah," Deutsche Welle reported Friday.
Hamburg police Thursday installed a dozen roadblocks to look for the men. Traffic in and out of the northern German port city was delayed.
One of the men had carried a backpack. Surveillance cameras inside a city car they boarded recorded images of the men, which were published in newspapers and on TV.
"We expect to get several more clues on Friday from the population," a spokesman for Hamburg's interior ministry said.
Interior Sen. Udo Nagel said the citizens of Hamburg can nevertheless "without fear use our mass transit systems to get to work."
Officials called the witness "credible," but said they will have to wait until they have the men in custody to verify whether an attack was planned or not.
A police statement revealed the information about the operation was withheld from the public for a day so the initial criminal investigation would not be hampered, Deutsche Welle said.
Hamburg was the home of a terrorism cell led by Mohamed Atta, the man who is believed to have flown the first of four hijacked planes into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.
