German police have arrested a man accused of having ties to a suspected Islamic extremist captured in Austria and thought to have been plotting an attack, AFP reports.
A spokesman for state police in North Rhine-Westphalia said the man, 21, was taken into custody on Saturday in the western city of Neuss on a warrant for "planning a serious crime targeting the state".
A spokesman for the Austrian interior ministry, Karl-Heinz Grundboeck, confirmed that the arrest "is linked" to that of a 17-year-old terror suspect in Vienna on Friday evening.
"Investigations are continuing," Grundboeck told AFP.
Both German and Austrian authorities declined to comment further, but media reports in both countries said that the two had experimented with making explosives in the apartment in Neuss.
German news magazine Focus had reported earlier, citing judicial sources, that the elite SEK command force had stormed the man's apartment on suspicion he was planning a bombing targeting police and soldiers.
German police confiscated computers and mobile phones from the home, and the suspect's wife was temporarily detained for questioning, according to the reports.
The Austrian suspect linked with the suspect arrested in Germany has told investigators that he had sworn allegiance to the Islamic State (ISIS)and revealed the link to the alleged accomplice in Germany, according to AFP.
Germany is under a high-threat terrorist alert following a series of attacks which hit the country this past summer.
In the first attack, a 17-year-old Afghani with an ax attacked passengers on a train in Wurzburg before being shot dead by security forces.
In the second incident, an attacker set off a bomb in a restaurant in Ansbach, killing himself and wounding 12 others.
Most recently, terrorist Anis Amri drove a truck into a Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12 people and injuring 48. ISIS later claimed responsibility for the attack.
Earlier this month, German police arrested a Syrian man who allegedly asked ISIS to fund an attack using explosives-packed vehicles.
Austria has been spared in the string of attacks by Islamist extremists in recent years suffered by other European countries, but has beefed up security measures.
Facing the challenges of Austrians travelling to the Middle East to join jihadist groups, Austria's parliament in February of 2015 passed a law banning foreign sources of financing to Muslim organizations and requiring imams to be able to speak German.
In June of that year, an Austrian court convicted nine people of Chechen origin who were arrested on their way to join ISIS terrorists together with their Turkish driver.
In October, three Austrian teenagers were given custodial terms for trying to join ISIS terrorists in Syria.