Act of sabotage by a far-left group in Berlin, tens of thousands of homes are affected / “They deliberately put lives at risk”
Excavator at the site where electricity transport was sabotaged in Berlin. Photo: Sebastian Gollnow / AFP / Profimedia
Police in Berlin said they suspected a far-left group of being responsible for a fire on Saturday that left tens of thousands of homes in the German capital without power, a situation that had not yet been resolved as of Sunday, according to France Presse.
About 45,500 households were left without power after several high-voltage power cables caught fire on a bridge near a power plant in the southwest of the city.
A police spokesman told AFP on Sunday that the claim for the act, published online by the far-left group “Vulkangruppe” (Vulcan Group), was “plausible”.
In this statement, the Vulcan Group states that the power plant in the Lichterfelde district was “successfully sabotaged”, specifying that “this action was aimed at the economy of fossil fuels, not power outages”.
The Vulcan group also claimed an act of sabotage at a Tesla factory near Berlin in March 2024, where power lines feeding the complex were set on fire.
“Alleged left-wing extremists have deliberately put lives at risk, especially of hospital patients, as well as the elderly, children and families,” Berlin Mayor Kai Wegner wrote on X.
According to city officials, most hospitals and clinics affected by the outage were reconnected on Sunday, but affected schools must remain closed for the time being.
Berlin Regional Government Economy Minister Franziska Giffey said electricity had been restored to around 10,000 homes. According to the city's electricity grid operator Stromnetz Berlin, however, it will have to wait until Thursday to reconnect all customers, with cold temperatures slowing cable repairs.
Authorities also suspected foul play when a fire tore through electric poles in Berlin in September, causing a major power outage. A self-proclaimed anti-military group claimed responsibility for the fire on the Internet.
Germany is on high alert for sabotage activities targeting its infrastructure, including by foreign actors such as Russia.
