BERLIN, Wall Street Juornal , Oct. 8, 2016 – Police across eastern Germany were hunting for a 22-year-old man from Syria on Saturday suspected of planning a terror attack and said they had found “highly explosive” materials in his apartment.

German special policemen SEK search a housing area in the eastern city of Chemnitz on suspicion that a bomb attack was being planned in Germany

After raiding the man’s apartment Saturday in the city of Chemnitz and failing to find him, police fanned out in a broadening manhunt and detained three people they described as the suspect’s contacts. They published his name—Jaber Albakr—and photographs showing him wearing a dark hooded sweatshirt with a colorful print.

A German policeman guards a check point at a housing area in the eastern city of Chemnitz on suspicion that a bomb attack was being planned

But as night fell, more than eight hours after the initial raid, the suspect remained at large. In Chemnitz, a city of more than 200,000 near the Czech border, all but one of the platforms at the main train station were shut down because of heightened security concerns. In Berlin, more than two hours by car from Chemnitz, the police called in additional officers to duty, urged residents to use caution, and increased patrols at Schönefeld Airport.

plot find ‘highly explosive’ materials. 7 hours ago October 8, 2016

“We do not currently know where he is and what he is carrying,” the state police in Saxony, where Chemnitz is located, said on Twitter as the manhunt wore on. “Be careful.”

The German domestic intelligence agency tipped off Saxony authorities Friday evening, prompting the raid the next day. The man was suspected of planning “a terrorist attack with explosives,” a Saxony police spokesman said.

Remote-controlled bomb disposal robot on platform of train station in Chemnitz, Germany, on Saturday. Two persons were arrested at station in connection …

Authorities on Saturday were scrambling to investigate Mr. Albakr further, including whether he had any ties to extremist groups in Syria. A person familiar with the investigation said authorities suspected an Islamist motive for the planned attack.

Handout photos of Jaber Albakr released by the criminal office of the eastern federal state of Saxony.

Police found “several hundred grams” of highly explosive material in the apartment raided earlier Saturday, a spokesman said, and evacuated 80 residents. Authorities dug holes in the grass outside the apartment complex in which the explosives were detonated.

“This appears to be a very dangerous mixture,” the spokesman said of the explosive.

Mr. Albakr arrived in Germany as a refugee and was granted asylum, another person familiar with the investigation said. ARD public television said he had arrived a year ago.

Investigators assume the highly explosive substance found in the Chemnitz apartment was TATP, a material also used in the Brussels and Paris terror attacks, the person said.

Germany has been on edge for months amid concern that the roughly one million refugees and migrants who arrived in the country this year and last could include people seeking to conduct terrorist attacks. Two migrants pledging allegiance to Islamic State carried out attacks in Germany in July, incidents in which dozens were injured but only the attackers were killed.

In recent months, an upstart anti-immigrant party has fanned fears of terrorism and Islam in its campaigns in state elections, scoring an unprecedented string of electoral successes for a right-wing populist party in postwar Germany. The party, Alternative for Germany, is on track to win seats in Germany’s national parliament in general elections next year.