GERMAN security services arrested a 16-year-old boy and three other people on Thursday evening in connection with a suspected plot to attack a synagogue in the city of Hagen.

The detentions came on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, two years after one of the country’s deadliest terror attacks.

Foreign intelligence provided “very serious and concrete information” of the imminent attack, said North Rhine-Westphalia Interior Minister Herbert Reul.

He added that the synagogue had called off its celebration of Yom Kippur, when observant Jews hold overnight vigils.

In 2019, a German far-right terrorist attacked a synagogue in the eastern city of Halle. 

The attack, in which two people were shot dead, was one of the worst anti-semitic assaults in the country’s post-war history.

German Justice Minister Christine Lambrecht condemned the Hagen plot, saying: “It is intolerable that Jews are again exposed to such a horrible threat and that they cannot celebrate the start of their highest holiday, Yom Kippur, together.”