German Police Claim G8 Terror Attack Foiled

Hundreds of German police combed offices and flats associated with leftwing activists across six northern cities yesterday, saying they had evidence that a terrorist organisation was planning to disrupt next month's G8 summit.

The biggest early-morning raid took place in the northern port city of Hamburg, at a popular leftwing cultural centre known as Red Flora. In Berlin, two cultural centres were among the 40 buildings searched. Eighteen people arrested were being questioned last night.

Prosecutors in the German capital said they had launched an investigation into the so-called Militant Group, a leftwing movement believed to be responsible for 25 attacks during the past six years.

The interior ministry said border controls would be tightened in response to information abouut plans for fire bombings and other attacks. Unlike last year's G8 meeting at St Petersburg, the summit venue, Heiligendamm, on the Baltic coast, is easy to reach, lying close to the borders of both Poland and Denmark.

"We suspect those targeted, who belong to the militant extreme-left scene, of founding a terrorist organisation, or being members of such an organisation, that is planning arson attacks and other actions to severely disrupt or prevent the summit from taking place," a spokesman for the state prosecutor's office said.

"We're not talking about paint bombs," an investigator told Spiegel Online. "We're talking here of groups with the potential to commit terrorist acts."

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, will host the leaders of Britain, the US, Canada, France, Italy, Japan and Russia at the talks, which will focus on climate change and African poverty as well as economic cooperation.

German G8 protesters in a statement said the raids were a deliberate attempt prior to the event to disrupt their communication network and their plans for peaceful protest.