German police arrest three Syrians with suspected links to ISIS

German anti-terror police on Tuesday arrested three Syrian refugees they suspected of being members of ISIS and being linked to last year's Paris attacks, Germany's interior minister said.

The three men are believed to have used the same smugglers and received passports from the same workshop as some of those involved in the Paris attacks.

The arrests took place after pre-dawn raids in Schleswig-Holstein in northern Germany and formed part of efforts by Germany to root out insurgents sent to Europe by the extremist group amid the migrant influx. 

Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office said the three people detained were in possession of “extensive material,” but didn't elaborate.

However, Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said in a news conference that the men were smuggled out of Syria by the same smuggling operation used by some members of the group that attacked Paris in November 2015, killing 130 people.

German police said that the attacks in Paris and Brussels over the past year showed that the Islamic State had used the migrant flow to send people to Europe. It said it had received over 400 tips about people who may have a terrorist background, but most turned out to be wrong.

Police said the suspects were known to authorities for months.

Four violent attacks over the summer, three of them linked to asylum seekers, shocked Germany. Authorities warned that the attacks would likely continue, though German Chancellor Angela Merkel has defended her migration policies which include a decision to allow more than a million asylum seekers to arrive in Germany last year.