Police arrests a Nigerian suspected of planning terror attack in Germany

German police have arrested a 23-year-old Nigerian man and an Algerian,27, suspected of
planning an Islamist attack in overnight raids.

More than 450 officers took part in the mass raids targeting 12 locations, mostly in the central city of Goettingen in Lower Saxony state, authorities said.

Police investigating the fundamentalist Islamist community had acted on information pointing to
"a possibly imminent terrorist attack", said the
city's police chief Uwe Luehrig.

The two men, who had both lived for some time
in the city with their families, have been detained.

German security services say they consider 550
known Islamists as potentially dangerous and capable of carrying out an attack.

German federal prosecutors, in charge of terrorism cases, have struggled with a flood of
investigations against suspects and returned fighters from Syria and Iraq, news magazine Der
Spiegel reported last weekend.

Chief prosecutor Peter Frank urgently requested
personnel support from Germany's 16 regional
state services, complaining in a letter that his national-level service had "reached the limit" of what it could do, the magazine said.