BERLIN, Aug 19: German police on Saturday arrested a Lebanese man in a pre-dawn raid in connection with that they believe was a failed terrorist attempt to bomb commuter trains in the northern city of Kiel.

The 21-year-old man, answering to the first names Jussuf Mohammed, is one of two men suspected of planting two bombs found on German trains last month.

He was arrested in a police swoop on the railway station in the northern city of Kiel as he tried to flee the city, federal prosecutor Monika Harms told a news conference in the western city of Karlsruhe.

German investigators suspect the two homemade bombs, found on July 31 on trains in the railway stations of Dortmund and Koblenz, were part of a failed terror attack.

The suspect’s fingerprints and DNA were found on one of the two suitcases in which the bombs were contained, Harms told a news conference.

A hunt was still on for the second suspect, suspected of planting the other device, whose identity has not yet been established, she said.

The two men were not acting alone but within a “criminal organisation with a solid structure”, she said.

The man is expected to be brought before an examining magistrate Sunday in Karlsruhe.

Citing sources close to the inquiry, Focus magazine said on its website that he was a Lebanese student who lived in Kiel. Local media reports said police were searching the suspect’s residence, a student dormitory in the town.

The railway station in Kiel was closed for five hours early Saturday as part of “ongoing investigations by federal police”, a regional police spokesman said.

Investigators first thought that the devices were a blackmail attempt, but analysis of the contents revealed a possible link to Lebanon.—AFP