Germany hold Algerian suspected of Spain bomb plan

GERMAN police have arrested an Algerian man they said was planning bomb attacks in holiday resorts in Spain's Costa del Sol, prosecutors in the northern city of Hamburg said yesterday. The 30-year-old man, identified as Abderrazak M., was detained about 10 days ago, a spokeswoman said. A senior Hamburg police official told Reuters the security services had kept the man under observation for months and listened in on telephone conversations with suspected Islamic militants in North Africa and southern Spain. Fellow Algerians had possibly planned to head to Spain to carry out two attacks under the plan, the sources said. The detained man had also regularly visited another Algerian being held at a psychological unit in Hamburg for taking hostages and shooting at police in February 2001, the police official said. German authorities have arrested scores of suspected Islamic militants and cracked down on militant groups after it emerged that three of the suicide hijackers who led the September 11 attacks on the United States lived for years in Hamburg.