Thousands of households in the German capital Berlin have been left without electricity following an arson attack.
Yesterday morning, unknown suspects set fire to two power poles in the Johannisthal district in the city’s south-east. The attack shut down power in several high-voltage power lines supplying some 50,000 people and the Neuköllln district heating plant.
While power could be restored for some clients later the same day, around 20,000 inhabitants will have to wait for their electricity to come back on, network operator Stromnetz Berlin announced.
Several schools in the area remain closed and public transport was similarly hindered by the blackout.
The Berlin police said the fires were caused by arsonists and explicitly did not rule out a “political motivation for the act”.
Yesterday afternoon, an anonymous letter claiming responsibility was published on Indymedia, a website associated with Antifa and other left-wing extremist groups.
The authors said they had committed an “attack on the military industrial complex” with the aim of causing a blackout in the nearby Adlershof technology park.
The letter listed several German and international companies that have offices in the park, including construction group Vinci and technology company Rohde & Schwarz.
Martin Matz, speaker for interior affairs for the Berlin Social Democratic Party (SPD), told newspaper Welt today that the attack likely required insider knowledge.
“When you see where these power poles are or were located in Johannisthal, it is not entirely clear that they have anything to do with the power supply in Adlershof,” he said.
“The question arises as to whether insider information or information on how to do something like this was passed on.”
Germany has a long history of arson attacks and other acts of sabotage of public infrastructure. In many cases, law enforcement have suspected left-wing extremists to be behind the attacks.
In July, a fire set in a railway underpass shut down a major highspeed railway link between Berlin and Munich for several days. Left-wingers claimed responsibility for the attack in a letter also published on Indymedia.
In a similar manner, left-wingers claimed responsibility for apparent arson attacks on railway cables in Berlin in February and in Southern Thuringia as well as in Saxony in April.
