Three Muslims have been arrested in Germany for plotting “massive attacks” against Frankfurt International Airport and the United States’ Ramstein Air Base.

And they were living on Germany’s unemployment benefits while they hatched their schemes.

THREE men arrested in Germany had formed a terror cell to carry out “massive” bomb attacks, among the biggest on German soil, authorities say.

“They were planning massive attacks,” federal prosecutor Monika Harms told reporters today. She said the suspects had amassed vast amounts of the chemical needed to make the bombs used in the suicide attacks in London in 2005 which killed 56 people.

They planned to attack Frankfurt’s international airport along with the Ramstein Air Base, a key US military hub, Harms said. They also planned to hit and nightspots popular with Americans. “As possible targets for the attacks, the suspects named discotheques and pubs and airports frequented by Americans,” she said.

The trio had trained at camps in Pakistan run by the Islamic Jihad Union, and had formed a German cell of the group, officials said. They had procured some 700kg of hydrogen peroxide for making explosives. Officials said the 35-per cent solution of hydrogen peroxide, stored in a hideout, could have been mixed with other additives to produce a bomb with the explosive power of 550kg of TNT.

“This would have enabled them to make bombs with more explosive power than the ones used in the London and Madrid bombings,” Joerg Ziercke, the head of Germany’s Federal Crime Office, told reporters.

The three suspects - two Germans and a Turk - first came to the attention of authorities because they had been observing a US military facility at the end of 2006, officials said. The two Germans, aged 22 and 28, were converts to Islam. The Turk was aged 29.

Ziercke said of The Islamic Jihad Union: “This group distinguishes itself through its profound hatred of US citizens.” …

The three had no steady work and were drawing unemployment benefits while their main occupation was the plot, officials said.