Germany Avoids Attack After 12-Year-Old Boy’s Explosive Fails to Detonate

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BERLIN—Germany narrowly avoided a suspected Islamist attack this month after a 12-year-old boy twice planted an explosive device at a Christmas market that failed to detonate, German officials said Friday. The failed plot is the latest of several to involve children in Germany, a trend that concerns authorities because minors are largely protected against surveillance by local law and generally face much lighter sentences than adults in courts. The German-Iraqi boy, who was born in the city of Ludwigshafen and wasn’t named in keeping with German privacy law, is alleged to have planted an improvised nail bomb hidden in a rucksack at his hometown’s Christmas market on Dec. 5, justice officials said. Police found the boy’s backpack in a bush next to city hall after being alerted by passersby and defused the explosive inside it, local prosecutor Hubert Ströber said. “This is a startling report,” Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert said Friday when asked about the case.

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