BERLIN, April 16: German police hunting for "militant Islamic extremists" conducted identity checks on hundreds of Muslims as they left mosques after Friday prayers.

A police spokesman in Bochum said about 400 people were checked as they left two mosques in the western city.

He said no arrests were made, but a handful of Turks and Arabs who were unable to produce their documents were detained for further checks. Police stressed they did not enter the mosques and the operations could not be described as raids.

In a statement, they said: "The police have no indications of any concrete plans for an attack in Bochum. But there are serious indications that there are people at these two mosques who are under suspicion of belonging to a circle of militant Islamic extremists."

Germany has a Muslim population of more than three million, and security services closely track the activities of what they describe as a small minority of potentially violent people.

Germany was shaken in 2001 by revelations that three of the suicide pilots who led the Sept 11 attacks in the United States were Arab militants who had lived for years as students in the port city of Hamburg. -Reuters