12-year-old Iraqi fails in attempts to detonate two bombs in Germany

A 12-year-old German-Iraqi boy tried to detonate a bomb at a Christmas market in the western town of Ludwigshafen last month and planted another explosive device near the town hall a couple of days later, German prosecutors said on Friday.

Focus magazine cited security and judicial sources as saying the boy was “strongly radicalized” and apparently instructed by an unknown member of the terrorist Islamic State group.

A spokesman at the Federal Public Prosecutor Office in Karlsruhe confirmed that officials were investigating the case, but declined to comment on any possible Islamic State link.

Nobody was hurt in either of the incidents. The boy – born in Ludwigshafen in 2004 – is below the age of criminal responsibility, meaning no formal proceedings were launched against him, Public Prosecutor Hubert Stroeber said.

The youth welfare office is taking care of the boy and the Federal Public Prosecutor Office is in charge of investigating whether there are any suspects linked to him, Stroeber added. He said the boy left a backpack containing a self-made nail bomb at the Christmas market on November 26, but the device did not go off because the detonator apparently failed.

He then planted another explosive device near the town hall of Ludwigshafen on December 5, but an informant called the police and specialists defused it, he said.

The Focus magazine report said evidence pointed to the child having thought about traveling to Syria last summer to join terrorists.