Rock am Ring festival in Germany evacuated due to 'terror threat'

German police evacuated an open-air weekend "Rock am Ring" concert near the Nuerburgring race track on Friday night due to "concrete leads" of a possible terror threat.

"Due to a terror danger situation, we told the organiser to temporarily stop the concert as a precaution," police in the nearby town of Koblenz said in a statement. All those attending were asked to leave the concert and head to nearby camping grounds "in a controlled and orderly fashion".

"The organiser of Rock am Ring, working closely with the security authorities, have ended ahead of schedule the festival today," the police said. "The background to this was a concrete warning that made it impossible to rule out a terror threat."

"We cannot provide any further details on the background information," the statement added.Thousands of festival-goers sang You'll Never Walk Alone as they left the arena. More than 80,000 music fans had travelled to the Nuernburgring for the festival. The German band Rammstein was the headline act last night, but had not yet started playing.

The suicide bombing at a pop concert in Manchester on May 26 led to changes in the security planning for the German concert and the number of security officials was increased substantially to 1,200, the police said.

"We take all tips and suspicious incidents extremely seriously and investigate closely," they added. Last year, the third and final day of the "Rock am Ring" was cancelled after lightning strikes injured 80 people, some seriously.

Marek Lieberberg, the festival organiser, told journalists at the scene that he hoped the annual three-day festival would be able to resume Saturday as planned, but that it was not yet clear. "The public reacted fantastically," he said.

Fotos Lusa/Ronald Wittek