German police seize plane documents

German police have found airplane-related documents in a suitcase believed to have belonged to one of three men implicated in Germany in the terror attacks in New York and Washington.

Federal investigators say the evidence was seized when they searched the apartment of the girlfriend of one of the suspected attackers in the western industrial city of Bochum.

Ziad Jarrah, who flew on the plane that crashed in a field 80 miles from Pittsburgh, had been reported missing by the woman.

Detectives say Jarrah, a 26-year-old Lebanese native, often visited Bochum but lived and studied in Hamburg - along with the two other suspected attackers.

Police also searched another apartment in the Bochum area on Friday night. The federal prosecutor's office said the collected evidence "will be examined with a view to possible other contact persons and people behind" the attacks.

Jarrah left Germany in June 2000 and attended flying schools in Florida, the German agency said.

The announcement widens the scope of the German investigation, which has focused so far on Hamburg. Two men believed to have been on planes that hit the World Trade Centre in New York had lived in the port city, about 200 miles north of Bochum.