Terrorist attacks in Europe

Just days before the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks against the United States, European security forces in Germany and Denmark uncovered two terrorist cells that were planning massive attacks even more deadly than the bombings in Madrid and London. For many Europeans, the threat of a major terrorist attack still does not seem an imminent danger. But the round of arrests this week shows that terrorist cells with links to Al Qaeda are stepping up activity in Europe, and that increasingly, the plotters are European-born. After months of observation, German police swooped down on a vacation home in the wooded region of Sauerland in western Germany, engaging in a brief scuffle with one of the suspects before arresting three men who had amassed 1,500 pounds of hydrogen peroxide that could have been used to make car bombs. Two of the men are German converts to Islam, which officials called another sign of the growing threat of "homegrown" terrorism in Europe. The third suspect is Turkish.