COPENHAGEN: Fourteen people have been arrested in Denmark and Germany on suspicion of preparing one or several attacks in the two countries, Danish police said Friday, adding that the discovery of a Daesh flag could indicate the suspects “have a connection or sympathy with the terror organization.”
Flemming Drejer, operative head of Denmark’s Security and Intelligence Service, said the findings were “worrying” but “it is our assessment that there was no imminent danger.”
Drejer said the first seven individuals who were arrested in Denmark had acquired weapons and “we found things that can be used to make a bomb.” He said police found shotguns and a rifle with a scope, as well as the flag, but that he could not give further details about the Denmark case or its links to Germany.
“We are now in the initial phase of the investigation and we need to keep our cards close to the chest,” Dreyer said.
All but one of the 14 arrests took place in Denmark. Three of the suspects are Syrian nationals, ages 33, 36 and 40, who were arrested last weekend, according to German officials.
Danish authorities announced eight arrests on Thursday, and police said another six people were detained Friday.
The detention hearings in Denmark were held behind so-called double-closed doors, meaning the case is shrouded in secrecy and few details are made public. Officials did not identify the suspects.
Denmark’s security service, known by its Danish acronym PET, said Thursday that the first seven people arrested in Denmark were suspected “of having acquired ingredients and components for the manufacture of explosives, as well as weapons, or having participated in this.”
They are suspected of “having planned one or more terrorist attacks or participated in attempted terrorism.”
Earlier, German authorities had announced the first three arrests — two in Denmark and one in Germany. They said the suspects were alleged to have purchased several kilograms (pounds) of chemicals in January that could be used to manufacture explosives.
A search of a residence in the German city of Dessau-Rosslau, southwest of Berlin, turned up 10 kilograms (22 pounds) of black powder and fuses, the German prosecutor said. More chemicals were seized in Denmark.
Germany’s dpa news agency reported that the three were brothers, and that two had entered Germany for the first time in 1998 and received refugee status later. The chemicals they are alleged to have obtained came from a source in Poland, were delivered to Dessau-Rosslau, and then brought to Denmark, dpa reported.
Justice Minister Nick Haekkerup said late Thursday on Twitter that “the case shows that the terrorist threat against Denmark remains serious.”
Danish police find Daesh flag in raid of bomb-making suspects
https://arab.news/vvhur
Danish police find Daesh flag in raid of bomb-making suspects
- The operative head of Denmark’s Security and Intelligence Service said the findings were “worrying”
- However, he added that “it is our assessment that there was no imminent danger”
Afghanistan says it thwarted Pakistani airstrike on Bagram Air Base as fighting enters fourth day
- The fighting has been the most severe between the neighbors for years
- Pakistan accuses Taliban government of harboring militant groups that stage attacks against it
KABUL: Afghanistan thwarted attempted airstrikes on Bagram Air Base, the former US military base north of Kabul, authorities said Sunday, while cross-border fighting between Pakistan and Afghanistan stretched into a fourth day.
The fighting has been the most severe between the neighbors for years, with Pakistan declaring that it’s in “open war” with Afghanistan.
The conflict has alarmed the international community, particularly as the area is one where other militant organizations, including Al-Qaeda and the Daesh group, still have a presence and have been trying to resurface.
Pakistan accuses Afghanistan’s Taliban government of harboring militant groups that stage attacks against it and also of allying with its archrival India.
Border clashes in October killed dozens of soldiers, civilians and suspected militants until a Qatari-mediated ceasefire ended the intense fighting. But several rounds of peace talks in Turkiye in November failed to produce a lasting agreement, and the two sides have occasionally traded fire since then.
On Sunday, the police headquarters of Parwan province, where Bagram is located, said in a statement that several Pakistani military jets had entered Afghan airspace “and attempted to bomb Bagram Air Base” at around 5 a.m.
The statement said Afghan forces responded with “anti-aircraft and missile defense systems” and had managed to thwart the attack.
There was no immediate response from Pakistan’s military or government regarding Kabul’s claim of attempted airstrikes on Bagram or the ongoing fighting.
Bagram was the United States’ largest military base in Afghanistan. It was taken over by the Taliban as they swept across the country and took control in the wake of the chaotic US withdrawal from the country in 2021. Last year, US President Donald Trump suggested he wanted to reestablish a US presence at the base.
The current fighting began when Afghanistan launched a broad cross-border attack on Thursday night, saying it was in retaliation for Pakistani airstrikes the previous Sunday.
Pakistan had said its airstrike had targeted the outlawed Pakistani Taliban, also known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP. Afghanistan had said only civilians were killed.
The TTP militant group, which is separate but closely allied with Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban, operates inside Pakistan, where it has been blamed for hundreds of deaths in bombings and other attacks over the years.
Pakistan accuses Afghanistan’s Taliban government of providing a safe haven within Afghanistan for the TTP, an accusation that Afghanistan denies.
After Thursday’s Afghan attack, Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Mohammad Asif declared that “our patience has now run out. Now it is open war between us.”
In the ongoing fighting, each side claims to have killed hundreds of the other side’s forces — and both governments put their own casualties at drastically lower numbers.
Two Pakistani security officials said that Pakistani ground forces were still in control on Sunday of a key Afghan post and a 32-square-kilometer area in the southern Zhob sector near Kandahar province, after having seized it during fighting Friday. The captured post and surrounding area remain under Pakistani control, they added. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity, because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly.
In Kabul, the Afghan government rejected Pakistan’s claims. Deputy government spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat called the reports “baseless.”
Afghan officials said that fighting had continued overnight and into Sunday in the border areas.
The police command spokesman for Nangarhar province, Said Tayyeb Hammad, said that anti-aircraft missiles were used from the provincial capital, Jalalabad, and surrounding areas on Pakistani fighter jets flying overhead Sunday morning.
Defense Ministry spokesman Enayatulah Khowarazmi said that Afghan forces had launched counterattacks with snipers across the border from Nangarhar, Paktia, Khost and Kandahar provinces overnight. He said that two Pakistani drones had been shot down and dozens of Pakistani soldiers had been killed.
Fitrat said that Pakistani drone attacks hit civilian homes in Nangarhar province late Saturday, killing a woman and a child, while mortar fire killed another civilian when it hit a home in Paktia province.
There was no immediate response to the claims from Pakistani officials.
