Geneva on alert, searching for possible terrorist suspects

The Swiss city of Geneva raised its alert level today and said it was looking for suspects who, according to national officials, had possible links to terrorism.

A security guard at the United Nations' European headquarters told Reuters that Swiss authorities were searching for four men believed to be in or near the city.

Another guard said the U.N. compound was on maximum alert, and Geneva prosecutors said they were investigating the preparation of criminal acts.

Federal police in the capital Berne said they had passed on information about people with possible links to terrorism, but were not connecting them to Islamist militant attacks in Paris last month in which 130 people were killed.

The newspaper Le Matin said a car registered in Belgium, home to some of the Paris attackers, had driven through a police check near Geneva, prompting police to examine a photograph of four suspected Islamist militants provided by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Two sources confirmed that the CIA had provided the photo, but a CIA spokesman in Washington declined to comment.

The Tribune de Geneve newspaper said a suspect car with two men in it had been spotted in Geneva, which sits...