Berlin -- Police have identified four men from Germany who are undergoing training in terrorist-run camps in the lawless border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan, the German magazine Der Spiegel said.

Federal police were trying to prevent the Islamists returning to Germany for fear they would mount attacks.

It said the list included a 20-year-old ethnic German convert to Islam and a 23-year-old ethnic Lebanese who is stateless. Both flew via Iran to the border region at the end of last year.

They were thought to be members of the Islamic Jihad Union, a violent group said to have been foiled last year in a plot to bomb a US base in Germany.

Also believed to be in training were an ethnic German aged 25 who had written a farewell letter to his family and a man aged 28 from Bavaria state who had given away all his furniture and disappeared into Pakistan.

On Friday, German authorities warned that radical Islamists were actively plotting attacks in Germany.

DPA with Expatica