The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility after a Syrian blew himself up outside a wine bar, injuring 15 people.

A 17-year-old Afghan asylum seeker who launched an axe and knife attack on passengers on a train in Germany is believed to have acted alone.

Turkish police have arrested five people suspected of direct links to the suicide bombing that killed 10 Germans in Istanbul's main tourist area.

Munich train stations reopened and trains were running again yesterday as Bavaria’s top security official said that the warning about Islamic State (IS) extremists intending to blow themselves up in the German city was no longer acute.

JUST as our friends and neighbours in the North can only look on in despair — or even indifference — as Stormont politicians of all hues talk themselves into another frenzy of no-surrender obstructionism, the citizens of Europe, most of whom want a humane response to the growing refugee crisis, can only look on in frustration fast turning to shame as national ministers struggle to agree on how each EU member state might contribute proportionately to a community-wide response.

German authorities have conducted raids across the country, seizing explosives and arresting four people accused of founding a right-wing extremist group to attack mosques and housing for asylum seekers.

Germany’s distrust of Ireland’s data protection authority came out into the open when a senior minister related it to the failure of the country’s banking supervisor in the lead-up to the financial crisis.

Germany took the dramatic step yesterday of asking the top US intelligence official in Berlin to leave the country, following two suspected cases of American spying and the year-long spat over eavesdropping by the National Security Agency.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel says trust between the US and its partners has to be restored following allegations that American intelligence targeted her mobile phone, and insisted that there must be no “spying among friends”.

The German Foreign Ministry has summoned the US ambassador in the wake of allegations that American intelligence may have targeted Chancellor Angela Merkel's mobile phone.

A SUSPICIOUS package found in a Namibian airport near bags of a flight bound for Munich, which prompted fears Germany was being targeted in a terrorist attack, was a device designed to test security and didn’t contain explosives, a senior official said yesterday.

A suitcase containing a fuse and a clock was found in an African airport probably intended to be loaded onto a Munich-bound flight, German authorities said today.

Germany was put on increased security alert today through fears of a heightened threat from international terrorism.

GERMAN police disarmed a potentially harmful package from Greece at German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s office yesterday, hours after similar small mail bombs exploded outside the Russian and Swiss embassies in Athens in attacks blamed on Greek far-left extremists.