Four Syrian men have been detained in relation to an arson attack on a Turkish mosque in the southern German city of Ulm last week, authorities said Thursday.

The men, who were arrested Wednesday, are under investigation for attempted murder and attempted serious arson, Ulm police and the Stuttgart prosecutor's office said.

One of the accused has confessed to involvement in the crime, the authorities said, adding that the attack may have been politically motivated.

The investigators declined to comment as to whether the crime was committed as an act of protest against Turkey's Operation Olive Branch to clear PKK-linked People's Protection Unit (YPG) terrorists from northern Syrian region of Afrin.

Two of the detained suspects are 18 years old; the others are 24 and 27.

According to initial findings, a window on the ground floor of the building, which houses a Turkish mosque association, was hit by a petrol bomb in the early hours of March 19.

Several unused incendiary devices were found at the scene.

The PKK has been banned in Germany since 1993, but it remains active, with nearly 14,000 followers in the country. </s> The attack in the southern city of Ulm on March 19 caused only material damage and the eight people inside the building at the time were unharmed, local police said in a joint statement with Stuttgart prosecutors.

The suspects, aged 18 to 27, were arrested on Wednesday. One of the men has already confessed to the crime, according to the statement.

The 3 am (0100 GMT) attack saw several Molotov cocktails lobbed at the building, one of which started a fire that was quickly put out by police.

Prosecutors said they suspect the attack "may have been politically motivated", but according to DPA news agency they declined to comment on reports that it was an act of retaliation over the Turkish offensive in the Syrian enclave of Afrin.

"The investigation, including into the motive of the Syrians... is ongoing," the statement read.

Several mosques, cultural centres and shops frequented by Germany's Turkish community have been targeted in a string of attacks in recent weeks amid tensions over Turkey's actions against Kurdish militia in Afrin.

The Kurdish Community in Germany group earlier this month sharply condemned the attacks as well as social media calls that were "urging Kurdish youths to employ violence against Turkish institutions".

Germany is home to three million ethnic Turks and hundreds of thousands of Kurds. </s> BERLIN: The German city of Chemnitz was in lockdown Saturday after armed police launched a huge manhunt for a Syrian suspected of planning a bomb attack, as the country grapples with a weakened sense of security following recent terror assaults.

Police, who told people to stay in their homes, named the suspect as 22-year-old Syrian Jaber Albakr. Photographs posted on social media showed armed police clad in black balaclavas and helmets at an apartment building in the eastern city.

Germany has been on edge after suffering two attacks claimed by the Islamic State group (IS) in July — an axe rampage on a train in Wuerzburg that injured five and a suicide bombing in Ansbach that left 15 wounded.

In the latest alert, police in the state of Saxony issued a search warrant for Albakr, saying he was born in Syria in January 1994.

They said Albakr was wearing a black hooded sweatshirt and was “suspected of preparing a bomb attack”.

A search of an apartment in Chemnitz detected traces of explosives but failed to capture the suspect or find a bomb, a police spokesman said.

He said police launched Saturday’s operation after receiving information from domestic intelligence services.

“We are carrying out in Chemnitz a large-scale operation due to suspicions that a bomb attack was being prepared,” police said on Twitter, urging residents to stay at home.

“The explosion heard in the area was a police entry measure. The wanted person has not been found,” police added.

The attacks in July rattled Germans’ sense of security and fuelled concerns over the country’s record influx of migrants and refugees last year.

German police said previously they had identified 523 people who posed a security threat to the country, around half of whom were known to be currently in Germany.

On September 21 German officials said a 16-year-old Syrian refugee had been arrested on suspicion of planning a bomb attack in the name of IS.

The youngster, thought to have been radicalised only recently, was detained in a special forces operation at a shelter for asylum-seekers in the western city of Cologne, police and prosecutors said.

Initial information gathered from the teenager’s mobile phone showed that he had expressed an “unmistakeable willingness” to carry out an attack, Klaus-Stephan Becker of the Cologne police told reporters.

A week earlier, German police detained three men with forged Syrian passports accused of being IS militants and labelled a possible “sleeper cell” with links to the assailants behind the November attacks in Paris.

More than 200 police took part in pre-dawn raids in northern Germany to detain the men, suspected of either plotting an attack or awaiting orders to commit one.

German authorities have urged the public not to confuse migrants with “terrorists”, but have acknowledged that more jihadists may have entered the country among the one million asylum-seekers who arrived last year. -AFP </s> BERLIN: Kurdish authorities in northern Iraq detained a 20-year-old Iraqi man on Friday on suspicion of raping and murdering a 14-year-old Jewish girl in Germany, German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said.

Seehofer told reporters the Kurdish security forces had taken him into custody early on Friday at the request of the German police, who identified him as Ali Bashar. He had been living in Germany as a refugee since 2015, German media said.

The case has galvanised Germany at a time when its decision to take in large numbers of migrants and asylum seekers during Europe's 2015 migrant crisis is already stirring a political backlash. Many politicians are calling for new rules to make it easier to deport immigrants thought to be violent.

The victim, Susanna Feldman, was Jewish, although police said there was no evidence her religion had been a factor in the crime, and the Central Council of Jews in Germany cautioned against attributing any anti-Semitic motive to her attacker.

"I am pleased to announce a successful manhunt in the case of Susanna F.," Seehofer told reporters after a meeting with state interior ministers.

The teenager, from the city of Mainz near Frankfurt, was reported missing on May 22. She was found dead on Wednesday in a wooded area near train tracks in Wiesbaden on the opposite bank of the Rhine, near a refugee centre where the suspected attacker had lived, police said. An autopsy showed she had been the victim of a sexual and violent attack.

Police told reporters on Thursday that Bashar had likely fled with his family to Erbil, Iraq, several days ago. They said they had set up a special call centre for tips from the public, and had issued releases in Arabic and Turkish.

Joachim Stamp, integration minister in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, called on broadcaster ZDF for a recurring, quarterly migration summit of officials from the federal government, the 16 states and local officials.

Stamp said it was crucial to accelerate the asylum process and to expand the list of countries to which rejected asylum seekers could be deported.

The Iraqi suspect was already under investigation for a suspected robbery. He was appealing a December 2016 decision by German authorities to reject his asylum application.

Germany does not have a general extradition agreement with Iraq but must negotiate such moves on an individual basis, said foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Adebahr. She declined to comment on the specific case of Bashar.
Police in Germany announce that earlier this week they detained four Syrian nationals on suspicion of arson and attempted murder over a Turkish Muslim mosque firebombing in Ulm. Police say the attack "may have been politically motivated".