German police arrest teenage suspect over alleged pipe bomb plot

German authorities say they 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 say.

The suspect, who is not named, was “radicalized online” and had shared “propagandistic content” on social media, the Koblenz prosecutor’s office says.

The teenager “glorified the crimes” of the Islamic State group and shared its calls for “jihad,” it adds in a statement.

He had “obtained instructions online on how to make pipe bombs and explosives,” investigators say.

There was no indication that the suspect was on the verge of carrying out an attack, prosecutors say, 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 plowed into a crowd at a Berlin Christmas market in December 2016, killing 12 people.