No new signs of looming terror attack, Berlin interior minister says

However, he stressed that the country could not yet relax its current state of alert.

“With each day that the threat potential passes without the actual threat eventuating, the situation relaxes a little. But the period of fear is not yet over,” he told broadcaster ARD on Wednesday morning.

At the same time, he said there were no fresh signs of a planned attack, three weeks after German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière explained that there were “concrete” indications that Islamic extremists were planning an imminent attack on German soil.

“We have no immediate signs of a possible terrorist in Germany,” Körting said.

Everyone involved in dealing with the terrorism threat had been clear that “one had only a chance, but not a certainty,” of an attack when the sources’ motives may be murky, he said.

The interior minister for the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, Karl Peter Bruch, warned on Monday against having the terror alert go on for too long on the grounds that people could become complacent about future warnings.

DAPD/The Local/dw