Video threatens attacks on three German cities

BERLIN - A mysterious short film which showed up on the YouTube video website threatened terrorist attacks on three German cities, Germany’s interior ministry confirmed Saturday. But officials remained unsure if it was not a hoax.

No Islamist propaganda was evident in the video, which has a soundtrack of machine-gun bursts and exploding shells. The images include a text saying Berlin, Cologne and Bremen will be attacked.

The ministry said YouTube took down the video Jan 12. The US website deletes offensive material as soon as users spot it.

German security authorities were analysing a copy of the video.

But Ehrhart Koerting, minister of the interior in the state of Berlin, said experts perceived ‘no change in the threat level to Germany’, noting the clip offered no references to or symbols of any radical group.

The news magazine Focus said religious statements, which are usual in Islamist threats, were conspicuously absent from the anonymous video.

‘We are going to send an army into the middle of your cities, especially Berlin, Cologne and Bremen,’ the German text of the video said, according to Focus. ‘Germany and four other nations will be in trouble from February.’

A week ago, Germany was specifically threatened in a German-language Islamist video, which security officials say was genuine and came from an offshoot of Al Qaeda.

Another news magazine, Der Spiegel, said the speaker in last week’s video, a Moroccan-born German national identified as Bekkay H., had become a senior Al Qaeda planner of terrorist attacks. He was based in the Pakistan region of Waziristan, the magazine said.