German police raid mosque

There has been a series of terror arrests in Hamburg

Armed police are searching a mosque in Hamburg after a report that a man was inside preparing explosives for an attack.

Officers surrounded the El Nur mosque in the St Georg section of the northern German city shortly after 0500 local time (0300 GMT).

Streets were blocked off but there were no initial reports of anyone being found matching the description given in a tip-off.

Hamburg's al-Qaeda links

Three 11 September hijackers believed to have plotted attack in the city

Moroccan resident charged with aiding al-Qaeda

Hamburg businessman named as having links to Osama Bin Laden

Hamburg has been at the heart of investigations into Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda terror network.

But police did not immediately say if the mosque raid had any connection to those investigations.

Three of the 11 September hijackers once lived in Hamburg and were believed to have partially planned the attack while in the city.

German prosecutors also recently accused a 28-year-old Moroccan man, Mounir al-Motassadek, of helping an al-Qaeda cell in Hamburg and being an accessory to the murders of more than 3,000 people in the attacks on New York and Washington.

And on Tuesday, four members of a family behind an import-export firm were also arrested on suspicion of being a cover for the smuggling of Islamic militants into Germany and other criminal activities such as money laundering.