No arrests have yet been made, but the men, who are aged between 23 and 36,
have been named as official suspects. One is a convert to Islam.

Prosecutors said they cannot divulge how German investigators learned the
ambulance had been converted into a military vehicle for fear it would
compromise their ongoing investigations.

The Bavarian Interior Ministry initially announced the ambulance had been paid
for by a charity in Germany, but prosecutors said they could not confirm
that.

“We suspect that one of the men bought the vehicles, but where he got the
money I can’t tell you,” Antje Gabriels-Gorsolke, a spokeswoman for the
Nuremberg- Fürth prosecutor’s office, said.

She was also unable to confirm reports that the six other vehicles believed to
have been supplied by the men were off-road 4x4s.

“We have to locate the handiwork of the dangerous Salafist supporters’
networks in Germany,” the Bavarian Interior Minister, Joachim Herrmann,
said.

“We cannot stand idly by while the death squads of the terrorist Islamic State
in Syria and Iraq get assistance from Germany.”

There is no evidence to suggest any of the latest suspects took part in any
fighting during their time in Syria, but more than 400 volunteers are
believed to have travelled from Germany to Syria and Iraq to fight for
Islamic State and other jihadist groups there.

Their numbers include at least 24 children, the youngest of whom is just 13,
according to the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency.