Austrian police arrest man on suspicion of planning attack in Vienna

VIENNA (Reuters) – Austrian police arrested a man on Friday suspected of planning a bomb attack in Vienna, a police spokesman said.

The man was arrested in a Vienna apartment by special forces at around 1700 GMT, he said, adding that foreign intelligence services had warned Austrian authorities about a possible attack.

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“There were growing indications of a planned attack in the capital in the past few days.”

An attack at a Berlin Christmas market killed 12 people in December. The attacker, a rejected asylum seeker from Tunisia, was shot dead by Italian police in Milan four days later.

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Austrian newspaper Krone said a group of radical Islamists of Albanian descent had planned an attack in Vienna between Jan. 15 and 30. It did not specify its sources for the report.

The arrested man had been monitored by special forces since he entered Austria earlier on Friday, Krone said. He had built an explosive device in Germany and planned to use it in Vienna, according to the paper.