PAKISTAN: 5 GERMAN NATIONALS KILLED IN DRONE STRIKE
Baku, October 5 (AZERTAC). Pakistani intelligence officials confirmed Tuesday that five German nationals were killed in a drone strike in northwest Pakistan a day earlier.
The Germans were among 11 suspected militants killed Monday. Three others were foreigners whose nationalities were not disclosed, said the officials -- who did not want to be named. The rest were Pakistanis.
There were no immediate comments from Germany.
The strike happened in the Mir Ali area of North Waziristan, the officials said.
Missiles struck a building that held the eight, who are believed to have been members of the group Jihad al Islami, the officials said.
The strike comes a day after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the FBI issued a joint bulletin warning that terror attacks were being plotted against targets Europe. European intelligence officials said Monday that a group of jihadists from Germany were at the heart of the plots, but it was not immediately clear if the warning and the suspected drone strike were related.
The reported plots prompted the U.S. State Department to issue a Europe-wide security advisory for Americans traveling abroad.
The alert did not cite specific countries because the information about the threat was not specific enough to do so, a State Department spokesman said Monday.
"We have credible information that justified the alert, but it is not specific at this point," said State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley.
Japan issued a similar alert Monday, citing the warnings issued by the United States and by Britain, which raised the level highest for France and Germany.
On Friday, Sweden raised its threat level from "low" to "elevated," the third-highest threat level on a scale of five that ranges from "no threat" to "low threat" to "elevated threat" to "high threat" to "very high threat."
Several European governments said Sunday that they were not raising their already-high alert levels. The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Sunday that the U.S. advisory was "in line with the general recommendations that we have addressed to the French population."
"The terrorist threat remains high in France, the alert level remains unchanged at level red."
Britain`s Foreign and Commonwealth Office changed its travel advisory for British citizens in France and Germany from a "substantial" threat of terrorism to a "high" threat, but the office said it does not comment on intelligence matters and thus could not say whether the change was related to the U.S. travel alert.
A spokeswoman for Germany`s interior ministry said the country will remain at Level 2 alert, which indicates a "high, probable risk" of a terrorist attack.
Spain has remained at this stage since January of this year.
The four-page U.S. bulletin, a copy of which was obtained by CNN, is titled "Al Qaeda Threat to Europe."
A group of jihadists from the German city of Hamburg is alleged to be at the heart of the alleged al Qaeda plot to launch coordinated terrorist attacks against European cities, European intelligence officials said.
Western intelligence officials say they learned about the alleged plot after Ahmed Sidiqi, a German citizen of Afghan descent, was arrested in Afghanistan in July and taken to the U.S. air base at Bagram for questioning.
He has not been charged and intelligence sources in Germany said he was cooperating with the investigation.
In early 2009, Sidiqi and 10 others left Hamburg for the tribal areas of Pakistan -- where most joined a jihadist group fighting U.S. and coalition forces across the border in Afghanistan, according to German intelligence officials.
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