Germany match cancelled after ‘concrete indications’ of threat

Hours after a large-scale anti-terror operation in the western city of Aachen, German nerves were back on edge after the cancellation of a soccer match due to a terrorist warning. The German chancellor Angela Merkel was to attend the friendly German-Dutch game.

The match in Hanover was cancelled shortly before 7pm local time after federal interior minister Thomas de Maizière told his state colleague in Lower Saxony of a tip-off, reportedly from a foreign intelligence service, that an Islamist organisation had planned an attack.

The few fans in the stadium were instructed to leave while those yet to enter the ground, were refused entry and told to go home.

“We had concrete indications that someone wanted to detonate explosives in the stadium,” said Mr Boris Pistorious, state interior minister in Lower Saxony.

At a press conference in Berlin, an ashen-faced Mr de Maizière declined to discuss details of the warning for fear of “unsettling further” the German public and unveiling the source of the tip-off.

“I ask the media to trust me on this,” he said. “We did this for the right reasons.”

For Germany, it was a double disaster to cancel a match intended as a show of solidarity with France, and as a show that Germany wouldn't be intimidated by terrorism.

As security services combed the Hanover stadium for signs of a threat last night, ZDF public television reported that the caterers and even their broadcast truck had been searched. The Dutch national side flew home immediately after the cancellation and Hanover was a ghost-town, with police armed with machine-guns patrolling the streets.