German police officers conducted nation-wide raids in more than a dozen buildings to tackle the jihadist group ISIS' financing. Some local reports also said that there was "imminent terror threat."
The SEK, an elite anti-terrorism police unit, conducted raids across Thuringia, Hamburg, North Rhine-Westphalia, Saxony and Bavaria, according to Spiegel magazine, which cited Thuringia police.
The police is looking for a 28-year-old suspect, believed to be a "Russian national of Chechen descent" and with links to the ISIS. The suspect could be plotting "a serious act of violence," Bild reported. Along with the 28-year-old, 10 men and three women — also from Chechnya with Russian citizenship — with links to ISIS are also being searched for. The group reportedly was financing the ISIS.
The suspects are reportedly asylum seekers with unknown residence status.
One suspect was reportedly arrested in the operations.
The authorities and detection dogs went looking for explosives at some of the locations. However, investigators have said that there is no concrete evidence of the imminent attack.
Germany has been on high alert after a round of attacks by those who had pledged allegiance to the ISIS. Chancelor Angela Merkel has been criticised repeatedly over Germany's open-door policy for migrants and refugees as ISIS terrorists have been taking advantage of it and entering the country posing as asylum-seekers.
In July, a Pakistani teenager Riaz Khan Ahmadzai who had posed as an Afghan refugee, knifed multiple passengers on a train in Wurzburg. A string of such lone-wolf attacks have been carried out in Germany in the past year.
