German police boarded a Dutch airliner in Cologne this morning and arrested two men suspected of planning to take part in terrorist attacks.
The police spokesman identified the suspected militants on a KLM aircraft about to take off for Amsterdam.
They are a 23-year-old Somali and a 24-year-old German born in Somalia's capital Mogadishu.
'The police did not storm the plane,' spokesman Frank Scheulen told wire services. 'It all went off in quite an unspectacular manner.'
No further details were immediately available from the police but Der Spiegel magazine's website said police did not suspect the men were intending to hijack the plane.
'German police authorities removed two passengers from the plane. We don't know the exact details but all the passengers had to get out for a check of all the luggage, and they removed the suspects' luggage,' said a spokesman for KLM.
The flight, KL1804, continued its journey to Amsterdam just over an hour later and has since landed in Amsterdam.
The arrests appear to be unrelated to a search for two suspected militants which the Federal Crime Office had announced yesterday.
The office had said it believed the two men, one German and one born in Lebanon, might be heading to Germany. It had previously thought they were in Afghanistan.
