"After the terror attacks last Friday in Paris and the search for
the perpetrators and the people pulling the strings, police in Aachen
got a lead to suspicious individuals in Alsdorf," a police statement
said.
German police arrest five in operation linked to Paris attacks(Reuters)
Police in the western German city of Aachen
arrested five people, at least three of them foreign citizens, on
Tuesday in an operation linked to the militant attacks last Friday in Paris that killed 129 people.
A
special police response unit overpowered two women and one man outside a
job centre in Alsdorf, a small town near Aachen close to Germany's
border with Belgium and the Netherlands.
"After
the terror attacks last Friday in Paris and the search for the
perpetrators and the people pulling the strings, police in Aachen got a
lead to suspicious individuals in Alsdorf," a police statement said.
A spokesman said the three were foreign citizens but declined to elaborate on their identity pending investigations.
Later on Tuesday, police arrested two more people in Alsdorf, the statement said, giving no details.
A
manhunt is on in France and Belgium for one of the eight attackers
involved in shooting and bomb attacks on restaurants, a music hall and a
sports stadium in Paris on Friday evening.
European search efforts are focusing on Belgian-born Frenchman Salah Abdeslam,
23, who investigators say escaped back to Belgium on Saturday after the
attacks. Austria's interior ministry said earlier he had entered the
country from Germany in early September, telling authorities he was on
holiday.
France and Russia both staged air strikes
on Islamic State targets in northern Syria on Tuesday as Paris formally
requested European Union assistance in its fight against the group
behind the carnage in Paris.
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