German police arrest teenage suspect over bomb plot

German authorities said Thursday they had arrested a teenager suspected of planning an Islamist pipe bomb attack.

Police found two bayonets, four pieces of piping and items suspected to be used to make a detonator in his home in the western district of Mainz-Bingen, they said.

The suspect, who was not named, was "radicalized online" and had shared "propagandistic content" on social media, the Koblenz prosecutor's office said.

The teenager "glorified the crimes" of the Islamic State group and shared their calls for "jihad", it added in a statement.

He had "obtained instructions online on how to make pipe bombs and explosives", investigators said.

There was currently no indication that the suspect was on the verge of carrying out an attack, prosecutors said, with no explosives found during the searches.

Germany has been on high alert for Islamist attacks since Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel sparked the devastating war in the Gaza Strip.

Another teenager was arrested this month on suspicion of preparing an attack, which reportedly would have targeted a Christmas market.

The alleged plot recalled the deadliest jihadist attack in Germany, when a truck ploughed into a crowd at a Berlin Christmas market in December 2016, killing 12 people.

More recently, Germany has seen a series of allegedly Islamist-motivated knife attacks.

Three people were killed and eight wounded in a stabbing spree at a street festival in the western city of Solingen in August.

Police arrested a Syrian suspect over the attack that was claimed by the Islamic State group.

In June, a policeman was killed in a knife attack in the town of Mannheim, with an Afghan national held as the main suspect.