Police are on high alert ahead of Germany’s traditional carnival celebrations starting this week after the Islamic State (IS) militant group called for attacks in Cologne and Nuremberg on social media, police said on Wednesday, the 26th of February, reports Reuters.
The German-language propaganda website run by IS had published a collage inviting viewers to “choose the next target of attack”, with dates and locations of upcoming carnival events, Bild newspaper reported.
The collage, with a bloody knife and the slogan “#LetsSlaughter”, also mentioned the Love Festival in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, scheduled for early March as a target.
The week-long carnival celebrations, which start on Thursday, take place in parts of southern and western Germany, where Catholics are predominant, and participants gather in the streets to party, drink large amounts of alcohol and dance.
It is particularly popular in western German cities such as Cologne and Düsseldorf, where next week’s “Rose Monday” will culminate in tens of thousands of people taking part in street parades with comical or satirical floats.
Cologne police said they were adapting security plans for the event, but believed the collage could be aimed at intimidating people rather than posing a real danger.
More than 1 400 police officers will be deployed in known hot spots, emergency services will be fully staffed, and carnival-goers will have their bags checked and their persons searched.
On Wednesday, the organisers of the carnival in the Bavarian city of Nuremberg announced that an event – the International Carnival Parade – listed on an IS-linked website had been cancelled due to concerns. However, around 50 people were expected at the event in a bar in Nuremberg’s main building, the organiser said.
Nuremberg police said they were aware of an IS threat, which was being assessed by national security services. They said that there was no indication of a specific plan for an imminent attack.
Ahead of the national elections on the 23rd of February, Germany had witnessed a series of Islamist-related attacks, including a car ramming into a crowd and knife incidents.