Police in Germany have arrested eight suspected members of a far-right terror cell alleged to have been plotting the armed takeover of eastern regions to establish a Nazi-inspired regime that would carry out “ethnic cleansing”, federal prosecutors said.

Amid a crackdown on neo-Nazi militants, the German nationals calling themselves Sächsische Separatisten (Saxonian Separatists) were taken into custody on Tuesday in pre-dawn raids on 20 premises in eastern Germany and the Polish border city of Zgorzelec, with another seven suspects in investigators’ sights.