Three men have been arrested in Germany on suspicion of planning a " massive" terrorist attach on United States facilities in the country.
Federal prosecutor, Monika Harms, said the three had trained at camps in Pakistan and procureed 700 kilogrammes )1,500Ibs) of chemicals for explosives.
She said the accused had sought to target facilities visited by Americans, such as nightclubs, pubs or airports.
Defence Minister, Franz Josef Jung, said that the men had posed "an imminent threat". Media report said they were planning attacks against a United states military base in Ramstein and Frankfurt airport.
Harms said the men planned to use vehicles loaded with the explosives to kill or injure large numbers of people.The arrests had prevented "massive bomb attacks", she added.
The suspects, all thought to be in their twenties, were suspected members of the German cell of a group she named as Islamic Jihad Union.
Joerg Ziercke, the Head of Germany’s federal crime office,said that the men had a " profound hatred of United States citizens" They had been under surveillance for six months, but the authorities decided to act when it became clear that the men were planning to move their huge stores of hydrogen peroxide.
They were arrested on tuesday afternoon in a raid on an apartment in North Rhine-Wesrtphalia.Another 40 raids were also ried out on properties across the country.
Wolfgang Bosbach, an MP with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats, said the planned attacks " would have had considerable consequences" and might have been timed to coincide with the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.