An act of "sabotage" targeting radio link cables caused the massive outage that paralyzed rail traffic in northern Germany on Saturday morning, Deutsche Bahn said.
The breakdown was caused by damage to the GSM-R radio network of the trains used for communication with the drivers but also, more generally, as a "central interface between the trains and the control infrastructure", specifies
Spiegel
, the first media to mention, citing security sources, suspicions of sabotage.
However, these essential cables could have been cut “in two places”, affirms Spiegel.
An action against this cable would require "certain knowledge" of the rail system, abounds the popular daily
Bild
, specifying that the federal police are in charge of the investigation.
Traffic was completely interrupted for about three hours due to "a failure of the digital train radio system", before being restored, according to Deutsche Bahn.
Cancellations and delays to be expected
The incident notably led to an interruption of connections between Berlin and certain regions in the west and north of the country such as Schleswig-Holstein, the cities of Hamburg and Bremen or even Lower Saxony and part of North Rhineland. -Westphalia.
The Berlin-Amsterdam link had also been suspended.
However, cancellations and delays were still to be expected on Saturday during the day despite the restoration of rail links, warned Deutsche Bahn.
This act comes just over two weeks after sabotage actions targeting the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines linking Russia to Germany.
The German government had in the process reinforced the protection of its critical infrastructures.
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