Terrorists planned to detonate three bombs inside the stadium during a friendly international football match in Hanover last week, an attack that was thwarted by cancelling the match at the last minute, according to a security official.

The official told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung that German security agents were tipped off by French counterparts that a terror cell planned to detonate five bombs in Hanover, including three inside the football stadium, one at a bus stop and one at a railway station.

The match, due to be attended by the chancellor, Angela Merkel, and several government ministers, was called off and the stadium quickly evacuated 90 minutes before kick-off on Tuesday night. No specific details of the terrorist threat have emerged until now.

The German official said the French intelligence agency shared details about the potential attackers including their names, which were not previously known to German security forces.

Even though no explosives were found and no arrests have been made, authorities are working on the assumption that the German cell exists, the official said. German police are now looking for the suspects, and are expected to step up raids in the coming days and weeks in the hope of uncovering new information.

“Many of the terrorists who committed the attack in France were natives, and many were Syrian returnees. Both of those are true of many radical Islamists in Germany,” the official was quoted as saying. “For that reason, there is a great danger that we could experience a similar attack here.”

But the Frankfurter Allgemeine story was contradicted by a report from the state broadcaster ZDF, also quoting anonymous security officials, who said they were not sure that the German cell existed. The broadcaster said the French secret service told German officials that the leader of the cell, named in the media only as “Abdul F”, was a German citizen, which had raised doubts about the veracity of the report.

According to ZDF, opinions are divided in the German intelligence agencies on how seriously they should take the French tip-off, as they receive warnings about the existence of five- to seven-man terrorist cells “almost weekly”.

In most cases, the reports turn out to be unsubstantiated, the unnamed officials told the broadcaster, but “since Paris we are looking at those warnings differently”.

According to the BfV, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, there are 1,100 Islamists in Germany, of which 420 are classified as likely to threaten public safety because they have apparently shown a readiness to use violence.