POTSDAM, Germany (Reuters) - Experts on Friday made safe a device filled with nails that was delivered to a pharmacy near an outdoor Christmas market in the German city of Potsdam near Berlin, local police and security officials said.
Germany is on high alert for potential militant attacks nearly a year after a Tunisian Islamist hijacked a truck, killed its driver, and then rammed the vehicle into a Christmas market in central Berlin, killing 11 people there.
In Potsdam, police evacuated a large area of the city, including parts of the Christmas market and closed numerous stores while they investigated the package, which had been delivered to a local pharmacy.
Karl-Heinz Schroeter, interior minister of the state of Brandenburg, said the area would remain shut for now while police investigated whether any other similar packages had been delivered.
"We are in the process of continuing our investigation ... It's possible that additional packages were delivered here in the vicinity of the Christmas market," Schroeter told reporters. "We want to ensure that no one is any danger."
He told reporters that several hundred grams of nails were found in a metal cylinder in the package, but said it was unclear if the device included any actual explosives.
"We just don't know at this point if this was a device that could have actually exploded or a fake or a test," Schroeter said.
Experts used a robot to defuse the device using high-powered streams of water, officials said.
Peter Meyritz, a senior Potsdam police official, said the pharmacist alerted police on Friday afternoon after he opened the package and discovered wires, nails and batteries inside.
Christmas markets opened across Germany on Monday at the start of the holiday season, fortified with security staff and concrete barriers to protect shoppers.
Germany has around 2,600 such markets, filled with sparkling Christmas trees and wooden stalls serving candied nuts, sausages, mulled wine and handicrafts.
Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said this week Germany had increased information-sharing between federal and state officials and taken other steps to increase security after a series of missteps in the Berlin case.
An Ministry spokesman said this week the risk of an attack in Europe and Germany is "continuously high".
(Reporting by Holger Koerner and Zoltan Berta in Potsdam, and Andrea Shalal in Berlin; Zoltan Berta; Editing by Michael Nienaber/Mark Heinrich)
