Chemnitz, Germany: German police stepped up security at airports and train stations Sunday as they pressed a nationwide manhunt for a Syrian man suspected of plotting a bomb attack.
The suspect, Jaber Al Bakr, 22, has been on the run since police commandos stormed his flat on Saturday and found explosives which a bomb disposal squad later detonated in a controlled blast.
Police said the man, pictured wearing a black hooded sweatshirt, was “suspected of preparing a bomb attack”, adding on Sunday that they were following more than 80 possible leads.
Albakr may have “an Islamist motive”, police sources told AFP. German news agency DPA, citing security sources, said he was believed to have links to Daesh.
In a posting on Twitter, police warned the public to be vigilant.
“The search for the suspect is under way. We do not know where he is and what he’s carrying with him. Be careful.”
A day after arresting three of Al Bakr’s associates, police said one of them remained in custody, suspected of complicity, while the other two were released.
“Terror fear grips all of Germany,” ran a headline on the website of Bild newspaper.
Police said “several hundred grams” of an “explosive substance even more dangerous than TNT” were found in the apartment in the eastern city of Chemnitz, about 260km south of Berlin.
“Even a small quantity of this substance could have caused enormous damage,” police said.
Local media reported the substance was TATP, the homemade explosive known as “mother of Satan” that was used by jihadists in the Paris and Brussels attacks.
A spokesman for Germany’s domestic intelligence agency told AFP that Al Bakr, who was thought to have arrived last year as a refugee, had been under surveillance for some time.
News site Focus Online said he was suspected of planning an attack on an airport.
Investigators raised the alarm on Friday, sparking Saturday’s raid in a neighbourhood of Chemnitz whose communist-era housing estates are home to many recently-arrived refugees.
Heavily-armed police commandos, wearing helmets and balaclavas, evacuated over 100 residents, then blew open the flat’s door.
The explosives found in the flat were destroyed in specially-dug holes on land nearby.
Part of Chemnitz’s main station was sealed off on Saturday as police used a remote-controlled robot to inspect a suspect package, which turned out to be harmless.
Germany has been on edge since two attacks in July which were claimed by Daesh — an axe rampage on a train in Wuerzburg that injured five, and a suicide bombing in Ansbach in which 15 people were hurt.
The bloodshed has rattled Germans’ sense of security and fuelled concerns over the country’s record influx of nearly 900,000 refugees and migrants last year.
German police say they have foiled a number of bomb attacks this year.
In late September, police arrested a 16-year-old Syrian refugee in Cologne on suspicion he was planning a bombing in the name of Daesh.