Synagogue blast may mark al-Qaida's return - Germany

Germany has for the first time raised the possibility that a truck bombing at a Tunisian synagogue that killed 16 people was an al-Qaida terrorist attack.

If confirmed, the blast on Djerba island would be the first terror attack by Osama bin Laden’s terror network since September 11.

‘‘We are considering all possibilities, but those that we must consider include al-Qaida structures,’’ Interior Minister Otto Schily said.

Schily said he will travel to Tunisia this weekend to meet investigators and President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, possibly on Monday.

The number of dead in the attack rose to 16 today with the death of a 15-year-old girl in the northern German city of Luebeck. Eleven of the dead were Germans.

Federal prosecutors this week detained a man in Germany who was allegedly telephoned shortly before the blast by the suspected attacker.

The suspect was released on Tuesday after prosecutors said they lacked sufficient evidence to hold him.

A German newspaper said the alleged driver of the gas-laden truck that blew up at the Ghriba synagogue telephoned a German contact shortly before the blast, urging him to ‘‘pray for me’’.

The Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper said a man who investigators believe was Nizar Nawar, a 25-year-old Tunisian, spoke to a man living in Muelheim, Germany.

Quoting from what it said was a transcript compiled by German authorities, the newspaper said the caller told the other man, identified only as Michael Christian G, ‘‘Don’t forget to pray for me.’’

Tunisian officials said they found the German phone number in the memory of a mobile phone seized from an uncle of Nawar, Sueddeutsche Zeitung said, adding that the significance of the intercepted conversation became clear to German officials only after the blast.

The paper also said the conversation ended with the man in Germany asking, ‘‘Do you need something?’’ and the caller responding ‘‘I just need daawa’’ - which it interpreted as meaning ‘‘I just need the order’’ in Arabic.

However, such an exchange is a common way for Arabs, particularly Muslims, to end conversations, with ‘‘daawa’’ meaning an appeal for God’s blessing for the other person.