German police have announced that they have arrested three people who allegedly planned an attack on Cologne Cathedral on New Year's Eve. The “alleged means of attack” was a car, local police said, adding that security measures had been increased around the church. The suspects are part of “Islamist groups,” said State Interior Minister Herbert Reul at a press conference. There was an arrest shortly before Christmas for the same reasons.
The three people arrested are probably connected to a Tajik who was arrested on Christmas Eve, said Cologne police chief Johannes Hermann. According to the Bild newspaper, the four were all Tajiks who wanted to carry out attacks on behalf of the Islamic State of Khorasan (IS-K), an offshoot of IS in Afghanistan. “Islamic individuals and groups” are “more active than ever at this time,” warned Herbert Reul, Interior Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia. The investigations after the Tajik's arrest at Christmas revealed that an attack with a car was planned, “but we do not know in what form,” said the Cologne police. Officers sent drug-sniffing dogs to search the cathedral's underground car park for explosives, but have so far found nothing suspicious. However, the protective measures have been significantly increased: since this afternoon, around 1,000 police officers have been on duty to “protect the cathedral and the population in downtown Cologne”. Police expressed confidence that New Year's Eve celebrations could continue. Germany has been on high alert for possible Islamist attacks in recent weeks. At the end of November, the head of domestic intelligence warned that the risk of such attacks due to the war between Israel and Hamas was “real and higher than it has been for a long time.” After the October 7 attack, Berlin banned the activities of the Palestinian group and related organizations. The bloodiest attack by Islamist extremists in Germany occurred in December 2016, when an IS supporter drove a truck into a Christmas market in Berlin, killing twelve people.
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