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German Rock Festival to Resume after Terror-Threat Scare | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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Festivalgoers leave the venue of the Rock am Ring music festival. Photo: AFP


A popular open-air rock festival in Germany will resume on Saturday after being disrupted by fears of a possible “terrorist threat” which have proved to be unfounded, the organizers said.

Police told AFP searches at the three-day “Rock am Ring,” held near the southwestern city of Koblenz were over. 

Some 90,000 people are expected to attend the event which ends on Sunday.

“After a series of intensive searches across the site the fears of an imminent danger were not confirmed,” the organizers said on their Facebook page.

“The police gave the go-ahead” for the festival to restart they said.

The festival was evacuated on its opening night on Friday after Koblenz police said they were in possession of “concrete elements, in the light of which a possible terrorist threat cannot be ruled out.”

Organizer Marek Lieberberg said 86,000 people left the site within 15 minutes without incident.

Police found out on Friday that “at least one person of non-German origin on which there was police information in the area of terrorism had access” to secure areas at the event, Koblenz police chief Wolfgang Fromm told a news conference. The backstage passes didn’t match those people’s real names, he added.

Security for the festival had already been increased substantially to 1,200 staff, in response to the May 22 deadly bombing in Manchester, England which occurred after a concert by US singer Ariana Grande.

Last year’s Rock am Ring program was curtailed by violent storms in which dozens of people were injured by lightning.

The country remains on high alert after a terrorist attack on a Christmas market in Berlin on December 19. 

Anis Amri, a 24-year-old Tunisian, hijacked a truck, killed its Polish driver and ploughed the vehicle through the market, claiming 11 more lives and wounding dozens.