Power was being restored Wednesday to thousands of households in Berlin that had been without electricity in freezing temperatures for four days after authorities said high-voltage lines were attacked, AP reported.
Authorities said about 45,000 households and 2,200 businesses lost power on Saturday morning after a fire on a bridge that carries high-voltage cables over the Teltow Canal in the southwest of Berlin, affecting an estimated 100,000 people.
Investigators said the network operator was able to reconnect many of the affected customers gradually, but the damage required several days of repairs. By Tuesday, AP reported that some 25,500 households and 1,200 businesses were still without power, largely in the Zehlendorf district.
Berlin’s power network operator said service was being restored gradually Wednesday to all remaining households, AP reported, citing German news agency dpa. AP also reported that it was the longest blackout in the city since the end of World War II.
Investigators have focused on a written claim of responsibility by a far-left group, headlined “Turning off the juice to the rulers.” The claim said a gas-fired power plant in Berlin’s Lichterfelde district had been “successfully sabotaged,” and it said the aim of the action was to strike the fossil-fuel energy industry, not to cause power outages.
Germany’s domestic intelligence agency said self-styled “Volcano Groups” have carried out attacks on infrastructure in Berlin and the surrounding state of Brandenburg since 2011. The agency said a 2024 attack on a pylon that supplies a Tesla factory near Berlin temporarily halted production.
On Tuesday, Germany’s federal prosecutor’s office said it was taking over the investigation, citing suspicions of anticonstitutional sabotage, membership in a terrorist organization and arson.
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