Six arrested over Berlin half-marathon plot

Police in Berlin have arrested six people for “preparing a grave city-endangering violent act" during the city’s half-marathon, which took place yesterday.

At least one of the people arrested had “planned to kill spectators and participants of the sporting event on Sunday with knives”, says Die Welt.

Police said they had found “isolated indications that those arrested, aged between 18 and 21 years, were participating in the preparation of a crime in connection with this event”.

Four of the arrested men were allegedly “linked to Amis Amri”, a Tunisian man who killed 12 people in Berlin in December 2016, when he hijacked a truck and drove it into a crowded market, reports Fairfax Media.

According to The Guardian, police were tipped off by a “foreign intelligence service”, sparking raids on several apartments and two vehicles, prior to the start of the race. One of the apartments raided by police had earlier been a subject of the investigation into the 2016 truck attack.

A man who killed two pedestrians with a van in the German city of Muenster on Saturday before shooting himself has been identified as Jens R by German media, the BBC reports. Prosecutors say he was known to police and was suffering from mental health problems.