Suspected far-left terrorists are being hunted by heavily armed German police this morning plunging parts of the capital Berlin into lockdown after gunfire was heard during early morning raids.
Images from the last few hours show specialist anti-terror teams raiding properties linked to the Red Army Faction (RAF) in the Berlin-Friedrichshain areas with two properties being searched.
Local news reports say two men, believed to be RAF former members Ernst-Volker Staub and Burkhard Garweg, have been arrested. Police are yet to formally identify the suspects.
According to German site rbb24, a spokesman for the Berlin police said two men had been arrested and their identities were now being clarified. When a door was opened the sounds of gunfire were said to have been heard.
On Thursday last week a grenade and other weapons were found in searches of the Berlin apartment where a suspected former member of the left-wing militant group was arrested.
Daniela Klette, 65, was arrested on Monday afternoon. While much about her whereabouts in the past 30 years remains unclear, she apparently had been living in the German capital under a false name for some time.
Klette is accused of participating in a string of robberies between 1999 and 2016, after the Red Army Faction was disbanded. She is suspected of robbery and attempted murder together with two other suspected ex-members of the group, Staub and Garweg.
The Red Army Faction, which emerged from German student protests against the Vietnam War, killed 34 people and injured hundreds of others.
The group launched a violent campaign against what members considered US imperialism and capitalist oppression of workers. It declared itself disbanded in 1998.
Police said on Tuesday that an initial search of Klette’s apartment turned up two magazines and ammunition that would fit a handgun, but no weapon.
On Wednesday evening, they evacuated the seven-story building and closed the street in the city’s Kreuzberg district as they brought out the grenade and other unspecified objects. Early Thursday morning, Berlin police wrote on social network X, formerly Twitter, that their work was complete and residents could return.
Authorities said later Thursday that the objects found in the searches also included explosives, various type of ammunition and firearms, including a Kalashnikov, a machine pistol and a handgun with ammunition.
Prosecutors in the northern town of Verden and Lower Saxony’s criminal police warned that Klette’s two alleged accomplices, Staub and Garweg, may be in Berlin and “also pose a potential threat to the public.” They had asked the public for assistance in the search for the pair.
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