Seven people have been arrested in Germany on suspicion of founding a terrorist organisation with the aim of carrying out high-profile attacks similar to the ISIS, prosecutors said.
The Turkmen, Tajik and Kyrgyz nationals arrested in the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia had known each other for a long time and entered the country from Ukraine shortly after the war began in 2022, said prosecutors.
They formed a terrorist organisation in June 2022 and had been considering targets in Germany and trying to procure weapons, but at the time of arrest did not have concrete plans for an attack, according to a statement from prosecutors.
Except for the Kyrgyz national, the suspects arrested in Germany had also been collecting money for the IS since April 2022 and repeatedly transferred it to the group abroad.
Dutch authorities on Thursday arrested two additional suspects connected to the group, a man from Tajikistan and his Kyrgyz wife, who had resided in the Netherlands since 2022.
The man is suspected of being an IS member and receiving the order to plot an attack, although plans were not yet concrete, Dutch prosecutors said in a separate statement.
Saudi Arabia shut its East-West oil pipeline on Friday after it was hit in a drone attack, disrupting a key route used to bypass shipping problems in the Strait of Hormuz.
BRICS members agreed on a joint declaration on Saturday, expected to condemn unilateral aggression by any country without naming individual states, according to sources cited by Reuters.
Philippine rescuers recovered 41 more charred remains from a ferry fire, authorities said on Saturday, raising the death toll to 76 and leaving 13 people unaccounted for, as forensic teams faced the daunting task of identifying the victims.
Russian air strikes in several Ukrainian regions on Saturday killed six people, injured dozens and damaged residential buildings and infrastructure across the country, officials said.
Bulgaria is investigating the cause of a fire at a weapons storage facility operated by EMCO, including the possibility of sabotage and a link to a previous blaze at another of the company's facilities in August, the interior minister said.