They said hundreds of police swooped addresses - including apartments and mosques - in five states. The detained are alleged to be members of a radical Islamic network suspected of aiding terrorists through money laundering and falsifying documents. The raids - which are still ongoing - were the culmination of a long-term inquiry, the authorities said. Germany has made fighting alleged Islamist terror cells a key security priority, says the BBC's Ray Furlong in Berlin. He said the country was shocked to find that some of the suicide hijackers in the 11 September attacks were based in the northern city of Hamburg. The suspects are alleged to have raised funds to "pursue their ideological goals", according to prosecutors in Munich - who co-ordinated the raids. The network "equipped people with false documents, making possible illegal residency in the country and abroad, and supported other like-minded group", the prosecutors said in a statement. "They are also accused of spreading their beliefs of racial hatred and recruiting people for jihad [holy war]." The Islamic network is believed to be based in the southern city of Ulm. The co-ordinated early morning raids took place in the states of Bavaria, Baden-Wuerttemberg, North Rhine Westphalia, North Rhine Westphalia, Hessen and Berlin. Some 50 buildings were searched, including private apartments and call-centres. The authorities, which plan to release further details later, said their immediate target was a group of 20 suspects. The latest arrests followed an operation in December which allegedly thwarted an assassination attempt on visiting Iraqi interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, our correspondent says.
UPDATE: Prosecutor Martin Hofmann told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa the suspects were mainly Algerians and Tunisians. Some had links to both al-Tawhid and Ansar al-Islam, he said, but added: "These connections, however, do not go so far as to permit investigations on suspicions of forming a terrorist group." Instead the charges were likely to be of criminal conspiracy. Blank passports and copies of official visa stamps were seized. "We suspect this group with having carried out a great number of crimes," Hofmann said, including counterfeiting passports to earn money. "This money, we suspect, then went to help finance the group's other goals." Five of those detained were women. The 22 suspects ranged in age from 17 to 46, and five were described as illegal immigrants to Germany. One suspect was believed to have done a course of training in an al-Qaeda camp in Pakistan.