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The power outage in southwest Berlin is expected to be completely resolved later today, Wednesday, and therefore sooner than expected. “We will gradually restart the power grid in the affected areas from 11 a.m. today,” Governing Mayor Kai Wegner (CDU) announced on X. The repairs at the site of the cable fire that caused the failure were “successfully completed,” wrote Wegner. “This was also possible because we declared a major disaster and thus pooled the necessary forces and processes.”
Previously it had PictureNewspaper reports that electricity access will be restored for all consumers as early as 11 a.m. “We are working on a resupply today during the day,” said a spokesman for Stromnetz Berlin the news agency dpa. Accordingly, the outage that began on Saturday was the longest in the capital’s post-war history.
Almost 20,000 households were still without power on Wednesday morning
The Senate had originally assumed that the power supply would not be restored until Thursday. According to the operator, almost 20,000 households and 850 businesses were still without power on Wednesday morning. According to the Senate, emergency generators had made it possible for all supermarkets and nursing homes to work again in the affected area the day before.
According to Governing Mayor Kai Wegner (CDU), a total of around 100,000 people were there blackout affected. 45,000 households and more than 2,200 businesses temporarily had no electricity.
Residents of the affected areas were supported, among other things, with the distribution of warm meals and hotel overnight stays paid for by the state of Berlin. There were, among others, forces from the Federal Police and the Bundeswehr in use. “It is personally important to me that we now support people in restarting so that heating systems in particular are not damaged,” wrote Wegner.
Federal prosecutors have taken over investigations
The cause of the outage was an arson attack on a cable bridge in the Steglitz-Zehlendorf district, to which a left-wing extremist group claimed responsibility. According to a letter of responsibility, it is said to be one of the so-called volcano groups that have repeatedly carried out arson attacks on public infrastructure since 2011, especially in Berlin and Brandenburg.
Wegner spoke of “left-wing terrorism”, and CDU General Secretary Carsten Linnemann also accused the suspected saboteurs of left-wing extremist “terror”. The Berlin Public Prosecutor’s Office originally investigated the case, The federal prosecutor’s office took over the case on Monday. She is investigating suspected unconstitutional sabotage, membership in a terrorist organization, arson and disruption of public operations.
What now? – The news podcast:
The danger posed by the left-wing extremist “Vulcan Group”.
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12 mins
Suspected perpetrators publish second letter of confession
According to several media reports, the suspected saboteurs have now published a second letter of responsibility. According to reports from the Tagesspiegel, the Picturenewspaper and the RBB. Environmental protection was already mentioned as a motive in the first letter.
In the second letter, the alleged perpetrators also contradict speculation that the attack was allegedly controlled from abroad. “These speculations are nothing more than an attempt to cover up our own powerlessness,” it says. “Anyone who claims that there must inevitably be a foreign secret service behind every form of sabotage is denying the reality of internal social conflicts.”
There have been rumors on social media in recent days that Russian secret services could be behind the attack. Certain formulations in the first letter of confession would supposedly suggest this. However, Berlin security authorities and federal authorities contradicted this. “We see this letter of confession as authentic and can therefore say that it comes from the left-wing extremist area,” said Berlin Police Vice President Marco Langer.
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