German police shut shopping mall fearing attack

Feng Xue
By Feng Xue
March 11, 2017World News
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Police in the western German city of Essen sealed off a shopping mall in the center of the town and ordered it to remain closed on Saturday (March 11) due to serious indications of a possible attack.

Armed police and vans surrounded the shopping center—one of Germany’s biggest with more than 200 retail outlets. But roads nearby remained open to traffic.

Germany is on high alert following the major radical Islamist attacks in France and Belgium and after a failed asylum seeker from Tunisia drove a truck into a Berlin Christmas market in December, killing 12 people.

Essen, in the industrial Ruhr region, has nearly 600,000 inhabitants.

One local passerby expressed his fears about the threat in Essen, since it comes just two days after five people were attacked by a man with an axe at the Duesseldorf central train station. The man was later detained by police.

“A couple days ago something happened in Duesseldorf and you get this feeling that (trouble) is coming nearer. Now there’s something up in Essen, you get a little bit scared,” the passerby, Rodion Voronov, said.

A police spokesman told a German broadcaster that they had viewed the threat as a possible terrorist attack.

A spokesman for Essen police, Peter Elke, later told Reuters Television that the building and all of its entrances and exits have been shut down so no one can enter.

“Yesterday we received very serious indications from security sources that an attack was planned here for today and would be carried out, so we were forced to take these measures,” he said.

 

(REUTERS)

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