A man suspected of planning a bomb attack has been captured in Leipzig after a two-day manhunt.

Axar.az reports referring to local news agencies that german police had been looking for 22-year-old Syrian refugee Jeber Albakr since a raid on an apartment in the eastern city of Chemnitz uncovered several hundred grammes of explosives.

A spokesperson for the federal prosecutor’s office said all signs pointed to an Islamist-motivated attack.

“The overall picture of the investigation, in particular the amount of the explosive found, suggests that the person was planning to carry out an Islamist-motivated attack.”

Islamist militant group ISIL claimed responsibility for attacks on a train near Wuerzburg and at a music festival in Ansbach. The July incidents wounded 20 people.

Albakr arrived in Germany in 2015 and is officially recognised as a refugee, Saxony officials said at the weekend.

The news that a refugee is suspected of planning such an attack will prove unwelcome for German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Her Conservative CDU Party is flagging in the polls, while the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is gaining support.

Merkel’s open-door policy saw the arrival of almost a million migrants in 2015 alone. She was quoted in September as saying she wished she could “turn back the time by many, many years” to better prepare for the influx.