Sabotage fears over German train attack

Security authorities in Germany are investigating an incident of what has been called "intentional acts"that led to mass disruption across the country's railway network on Saturday.

The alarm was fi rst raised by rail company Deutsche Bahn when it reported what it said was a "technical fault on the line", stopping many trains in the north of the country,which was initially explained as a disruption to the trains' digital communication network. But hours later when that was reported to have been resolved, there were still widespread problems.

Travel from the northern city of Hamburg to the capital, Berlin, was suspended, as were other high-speed intercity services, and international services to the Netherlands and Denmark were also severely disrupted.

"It is clear that this was a targeted and malicious action," said Germany's Transport Minister Volker Wissing,adding that "cables essential to the operation were voluntarily and intentionally severed".

No suspect or motive has yet been established but the Reuters news agency quoted a security source as saying cable theft was a possibility, as was a targeted act.

"We can't say anything today either about the background to this act or the perpetrators," Wissing said. "The investigation will have to yield that."

Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said that the authorities "have to assume intentional acts" were behind the disruption, and German news agency DPA reported that federal police said there were crime scenes in a suburb of Berlin and in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Much of the disruption aff ected the state of Lower Saxony in the northwest of the country, which is the second largest state in Germany,and where local elections took place on Sunday, where Chancellor Olof Scholz's Social Democrats were predicted to hold on to power, with the Green Party doubling its share of the vote.

Such a key piece of national infrastructure being the subject of such an incident, and the suspicion of intentional activity, will be a worrying sign for Germany after the recent incidents of suspected sabotage aff ecting the Nord Stream gas pipelines.

In recent years, Deutsche Bahn has been heavily criticized for delays to its services, and at the start of September announced a huge material upgrading program across its network.

In June, five people died and more than 40 were injured following a derailment in the Bavarian Alps that critics said highlighted the decrepit state of the system.