German Christmas market evacuated after improvised nail bomb is found

Police close the streets around a Christmas market after a suspicious object was found in Potsdam. Photo / AP

A Christmas market in the German city of Potsdam has been evacuated after an explosive device, believed to be a nail bomb, was delivered to a pharmacy nearby.

Police have now defused the device after having cordoned-off the area.

It was first delivered to a pharmacy but was reported as suspicious by an employee who opened it and found wires inside, local media reported.

Police spokesman Torsten Herbst said it was not yet clear exactly what the device - which has been destroyed - was made of, the Daily Mail reports.

Brandenburg's interior minister Karl-Heinz Schroeter said experts were trying to determine whether it was a viable device or an elaborate hoax.

Officers were assessing "whether the device was actually capable of causing an explosion or not".

He added: "There were apparently not only nails but also powder in the canister, and that must be investigated, could it be plaster, or something that doesn't explode or is it something explosive."

He said results of tests to determine the device's viability may not be completed this evening.

He added: "We just don't know at this point if this was a device that could have actually exploded or a fake or a test."

In a tweet, Brandenburg police said earlier: "The IED-suspicion has been confirmed.

"The affected area in the city center must be cleared. Please pay attention to our announcements via loudspeaker."

Police added, however, that they could not initially confirm if the bomb was booby-trapped.

Roads around the market were also closed.

The bomb was reportedly 20 inches long and 16 inches wide.

Local media said police were alerted around 1:30 p.m.

Police announced on Twitter about three hours later that the object had been defused.

Police close the streets around a Christmas market in Potsdam. Photo / AP

Germany is on high alert for potential terrorist attacks after last year's deadly attack on a Christmas market in Berlin.

Potsdam is about 15 miles southwest of the German capital Berlin.

The attacker, Tunisian asylum seeker Anis Amri, hijacked a truck and murdered its Polish driver before killing another 11 people and wounding dozens more by ploughing the heavy vehicle through the festive market in the centre of the city.

He was shot dead by Italian police in Milan four days later while on the run.

Germany has since been targeted again in attacks with radical Islamist motives.

In July 2017, a 26-year-old Palestinian asylum seeker wielding a knife stormed into a supermarket in the northern port city of Hamburg, killing one person and wounding six others before being detained by passersby.

German prosecutors said the man likely had a "radical Islamist" motive.

And at the end of October, German police arrested a 19-year-old Syrian identified only as Yamen A suspected of planning a "serious bomb attack" using powerful explosives.

IS also claimed responsibility for a number of attacks in 2016, including the murder of a teenager in Hamburg, a suicide bombing in the southern city of Ansbach that wounded 15, and an axe attack on a train in Bavaria that left five injured.

Germany remains a target for jihadist groups, with some saying that is because of its involvement in the coalition fighting IS in Iraq and Syria, and its deployment in Afghanistan since 2001.

German troops in the anti-IS coalition do not participate in combat operations but support it through reconnaissance, refuelling and training.

Germany's security services estimate there are around 10,000 Islamic radicals in Germany, some 1,600 of whom are suspected of being capable of using violence.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has allowed in more than one million asylum seekers in the past two years - a decision that has driven the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which charges - along with many in the mainstream - that the influx spells a heightened security risk.