By DPA
Berlin : The Islamic Jihad Union, a militant Islamist organisation originating in Uzbekistan, has claimed responsibility for the bomb plot against US facilities in Germany uncovered last week, the Interior Ministry said.
German security authorities were regarding a declaration to this effect published on the Internet to be genuine, a ministry spokesman said.
The attacks, planned for the end of the year, were to be aimed at the large US Ramstein airbase near Frankfurt, as well as at US and Uzbek consular facilities in Germany.
One of the aims was to force the Germans to close their air base in Uzbekistan.
The ministry said the immediate danger had been countered through the arrest of three people in a village in southwestern Germany a week ago, along with the seizure of large quantities of bomb-making equipment.
But it warned that the Internet claim emphasised the continuing danger from Islamist terrorism.
Security at a US airbase in Germany was tightened after an anonymous telephone threat to bomb the sprawling site on the sixth anniversary of the Sep 11, 2001 attacks in the US.
Police in the city of Trier said a search of terrain and buildings at Spangdahlem Air Base in the western German state of Rhineland-Palatinate had found nothing.
A base spokeswoman said extra barriers at gates were removed again but the alert remained.
The caller Monday evening spoke German with a foreign accent, possibly Russian or Turkish. He had warned that bombs would detonate Tuesday afternoon.
The police said there appeared to be no connection to the arrest of the three Islamists last week.
They had been under surveillance for at least six months as they bought chemicals for bombs to attack US facilities.
A German broadcaster, SWR, meanwhile reported that police believed a fourth cell member, 22, had absconded to Turkey. Federal prosecutors, who have said there were seven other suspects, declined comment.
In Berlin, the German parliament commemorated the dead of 2001 and Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble warned Germans, “We are going to have to live with the scourge of terrorism for the foreseeable future.”
Among groups in Germany that condemned terrorism was the Ditib mosque federation.
“The Sep 11 attacks graphically showed the utterness and cold-bloodedness of ideological blindness,” said Ditib, which mainly represents Turkish speakers.
Spangdahlem Air Base is home to around 14,000 people and is one of the US Air Force’s main sites in Europe operating fighter jets. Ramstein is primarily for transport squadrons.