Berlin - German security services have identified the man who appeared in an al-Qaeda video directed at Germany, Interior Ministry sources said in Berlin on Monday.

The man was born in Morocco in 1977, has German nationality and lived in the area around the former West German capital of Bonn for a while, the sources said.

Known to be active in Islamist circles, the German-speaking man has been in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region since 2007, they added.

The man, wearing a black turban and facecloth that left only his eyes visible, demanded Germany withdraw its troops from Afghanistan in the video that was posted on an Islamist website on Saturday.

The 30-minute message, delivered by "Abu Talha, the German," was titled "Rescue Plan for Germany".

It made no direct threats against Germany, but said the country was "gullible and naive" to believe it could "emerge unscathed" from having the third-biggest contingent of foreign troops in Afghanistan.

The message, dated October 2008, appeared on the same day as a car bomb killed five people, including a US soldier, near the German embassy in the Afghan capital Kabul.

Afghanistan's radical Taliban movement claimed responsibility for the blast, which injured 30 persons, among them a German and two other embassy staffers.

The German parliament approved legislation in October, increasing the number of German troops serving with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan to 4,500. (dpa)