Dusseldorf (dpa) – German security forces have started searches in three German states in connection with a Islamist attack on Vienna earlier in the week, the country’s Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) said on Twitter early on Friday.
The offices and homes of four people in Lower Saxony, Hesse and Schleswig Holstein are being searched by security forces and police, the BKA said.
The four people are not suspected of any involvement in the attack itself, but are thought to have links to the suspected attacker.
The operation was still going on on Friday morning, according to a BKA spokeswoman.
According to the BKA, search warrants were obtained on Thursday after the Austrian judiciary handed over relevant information to German authorities.
Kujtim Fejzulai was killed by police on Monday after he shot dead four people and injured more than 20 in central Vienna.
Since then, Austrian police have detained 15 suspected accomplices, Austrian police chief Franz Ruf said on Thursday, all “associated with the radical Islamist scene.”
Austrian Interior Minister Karl Nehammer said on Thursday Fejzulai seems to have been linked to a radical Islamist network that extended to Switzerland and another country.
Nehammer did not name the second country, but German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said there was a connection to Germany.
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