Hanover – Soccer fans and police officials alike sent a message to the world about reacting to terrorism with the orderly way they evacuated a stadium after a terrorist threat the night before, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Wednesday.
Advertisement
The incident comes four days after three suicide bombers blew themselves up outside the Stade de France in the Parisian suburb of Saint-Denis during a soccer match between France and Germany.
He said the “key warning reached us about 15 minutes before the gates opened”. In accordance to Reuters, he told ARD in that officers had “very concrete leads … in that we must take very, very seriously”.
Shortly after a concert venue, also in Hannover was evacuated as police ramped up security and part of Hannover’s main railway station was closed due to a police investigation.
According to information obtained by German media from German security sources, the cancellation was relevant indication to an attack that had been planned by potential Islamist attackers.
Lower Saxony Interior Minister Boris Pistorius added there was no confirmation of rumors that an explosive device was placed in an ambulance or another vehicle inside or outside the stadium.
Oranje is back in the Netherlands after the cancelled match against Germany on Tuesday.
“I understand the question but I will not answer it”, he told a hastily convened news conference when asked what had forced the decision.
“I will certainly not retreat into my shell, neither in my position as office holder, nor as a private person unless I receive concrete recommendations by those who deal with these issues intensively”, he told reporters. “We have to be aware that there are unsafe situations”, Koch said. At least 129 people were killed in the co-ordinated attacks in the French capital.
“I was just as sad as millions of fans that we had to cancel”, she said.
Both the German and the Dutch teams were then rushed to a secure undisclosed location before the hosts left individually for their homes and the visitors for the airport.
“It’s a sad day for German football”, Reinhard Rauball, in-charge of the German football federation, said.
De Maizière said the claim of responsibility by the group calling itself “Islamic State” for last Friday’s terror attacks in Paris did also threaten a series of attacks.
Advertisement
One of the six coordinated attacks took place just outside the French national stadium, during a friendly match between France and Germany.
