Despite those warnings, thousands of people were on the streets of Munich at midnight to welcome the new year with fireworks.
Advertisement
United States authorities had also earlier warned that a plot was being hatched, Bayerischer Rundfunk said.
Yet with little to go on and no arrests almost 24 hours later, officials in Bavaria were defending their decision to close the two transit hubs hours before midnight and to flood the city with heavily armed, specially equipped officers – 550 as of Friday morning, including reinforcements from other parts of the southern state.
German broadcaster ARD quoted a Munich police spokesperson saying they had two pieces of information about a possible attack.
Just 90 minutes before the southern German city was to ring in the New Year, police ordered the evacuation of Munich’s main rail station and another station in the west of the city after being tipped off about a possible “terror attack”.
Authorities were investigating intensively, Mr Herrmann said, but so far had not made any arrests.
Although it is not known whether there was any substance to the threats, Munich police have told media that the safety precautions were put in place because of a “false alert”.
Munich police chief Hubertus Andrae has said it was unclear whether the suspects are still in the city or even in Germany.
Herrmann, the Bavarian minister, urged the public to resist “being driven insane by terrorists as we enter a new year in 2016”.
The Munich alarm followed days of security warnings in Europe.
More than 500 police and special unit officers were called to Munich late on December 31 to help evacuate and secure the stations.
It read: “The situation in Europe and Germany continues to be serious in the new year”.
By 3.30 am, the stations had been reopened and the terror alert was downgraded later on Friday to the level it stood at before New Year’s Eve.
But many revellers continued their planned celebrations.
After the deadliest year for militant attacks in Europe since 2004, the build-up to the New Year had been overshadowed by arrests, security warnings, and the scaling-back of big traditional celebrations in Brussels, Moscow and Paris. Belgian police were also holding five people over an alleged New Year plot in Brussels.
Advertisement
Days after the Paris attacks on November 13, which included suicide bombings at a soccer match between the German and French national teams, a game in Hanover between Germany and the Netherlands hours was called off hours before kickoff because of a suspicious package.
