Police fear trained German terrorists

BERLIN, Oct. 5 (UPI) -- German police fear attacks by foreign-trained European extremists as a U.S. drone killed several German militants in Pakistan.

Monday's drone strike in Pakistan's tribal belt killed at least five Germans of Arab descent and three other people, British newspaper The Guardian reports, citing an unnamed Pakistani security official. The drone reportedly fired two missiles into farmhouse in North Waziristan that provided shelter to a group of foreign extremists.

The attack came shortly after the United States, Britain and Japan issued terrorism-related travel alerts for Europe. German and U.S. media reports suggest they're based on intelligence gathered during the interrogation of Ahmed Sidiqi, a German of Afghan descent who was arrested in Afghanistan this summer.

Fox News reported over the weekend that targets singled out by the extremists include several private and public landmarks, including the posh Adlon Hotel and the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.

German security officials said they are taking the alerts seriously but warned against alarmism.

"There is no concrete evidence for imminent attacks in Germany," German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said Monday in Berlin. The Fox News report, he added, was based on old intelligence.

German police are nevertheless taking the warnings very seriously. Konrad Freiberg, the head of the German police union, said he is especially concerned about an increased number of home-grown extremists who travel to Pakistan and Afghanistan to receive training in arms and explosives.

"More and more people from Germany have traveled to terrorist training camps -- and a large part of them has come back and now lives here," Freiberg told German daily Passauer Neue Presse. "You have to expect terrorist attacks."

An estimated 40 trained and violent extremists are in Germany ready to commit attacks, Freiberg said, adding that the police aren't sufficiently staffed to constantly monitor all of them.

One German didn't make it back: Sidiqi, who left Hamburg in 2009, was captured by U.S. forces this summer and has since been interrogated by U.S. intelligence officers in Afghanistan.

During the past weeks, the media leaked supposed information from the interrogation, including speculation that Sidiqi was part of a group of terrorists planning commando-style attacks on cities in France and Germany.

The plans, the media reports suggested, mimic the coordinated attacks by gunmen on several targets in Mumbai in late 2008. The terrorists stormed several public and private buildings, including the Taj Mahal Palace hotel and killed 165 people.

The Pakistani security official in an interview with The Guardian said there was only a small presence of terrorists in North Waziristan, where U.S. counter-terrorism drone attacks have surged in recent weeks.

"There are Turks, Germans and Americans in" the tribal belt and no more than 100 of them, he told The Guardian. "It's not as if an army of foreigners is being trained there. Nothing of the sort."

The official added that the U.S. travel alert is part of an orchestrated plan to pressure Pakistan into staging a major military operation in North Waziristan.

"They're insisting that we go in now, which we can't," he said. "We're telling them we'll go in on our own time."