Police officers secure a crime scene on a railway embankment in the Lokstedt district of Hamburg Photo: Bodo Marks/dpa
From BZ/dpa
Unknown perpetrators set fire to three cable shafts on railway lines in Hamburg. Numerous long-distance trains between Hamburg and Berlin are canceled. Now rail traffic has returned to normal.
After an arson attack on Friday night, rail traffic between Hamburg and Berlin has returned to normal. “Everything is going according to plan again,” said a railway spokeswoman for the dpa on Sunday.
The situation at the main train stations in Hamburg and Berlin had already eased to a large extent on Saturday morning. In Hamburg, only a few travelers were standing at the platforms from which connections to and via Berlin were to depart. The situation at Berlin Central Station also appeared calm. A few trains were announced as late on the display boards, and one train to Hamburg-Altona was canceled.
Cable ducts set on fire
According to the police, cable shafts on railway lines were set on fire in three places in the Hamburg city area on Friday night. Deutsche Bahn’s long-distance traffic between Hamburg and Berlin was severely affected. According to Deutsche Bahn, a total of 27 trains were completely canceled, 65 trains were partially canceled, 70 trains had to be diverted via Uelzen and Hanover and were delayed by around an hour. However, there was no major chaos at the main train stations in Hamburg and Berlin.
A letter of responsibility appeared on the left-wing platform Indymedia. “A few liters of petrol in the cable ducts on the rails should lead to long-term failures or restrictions in the transport of raw materials procured, for example, in the course of neocolonial exploitation and earth-destroying extractivism,” the letter says. However, the crime should therefore be about routes “that are not used for passenger transport”. Nevertheless, passenger traffic between Berlin and Hamburg was severely disrupted.
Faeser: Protect railway lines better
Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing called for consistent action by the rule of law. “Such attacks are a form of terrorism,” said the FDP politician.
Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser wants to better protect the railway lines. The SPD politician told BILD am Sonntag: “We are urgently investigating who the perpetrators were. And it hasn’t just been clear since this act: we need to protect our rail infrastructure even better. We are therefore increasing video surveillance: by next year we will increase the number of cameras on railway systems from 9,000 to 11,000.”