A railway in northern Germany has been hit by a suspected arson attack, bringing train services to a standstill days after a similar incident caused major disruption in the west of the country, authorities said on Tuesday.
Police said they were treating the incident as arson after a distribution box caught fire overnight in the town of Neu Wulmstorf overnight. A spokeswoman for national railway operator Deutsche Bahn said train services on the line between Hamburg and Cuxhaven were affected.
The company said it was initially unable to give a forecast for how long repairs would take. “We are working flat out around the clock,” a spokesman said in the evening.
More than 200 train services were cancelled and had to be replaced by buses, with thousands of passengers facing detours and longer journey times, a spokeswoman for the Hamburg S-Bahn suburban train network said.
A witness reported seeing flames at a technical building at a level crossing at around 1:15 am (2315 GMT Monday), police said. When the first emergency services arrived, the fire had almost burned out – but a distribution box 50 metres away was ablaze.
The second fire damaged signal cables, causing train services to be suspended, police said. The fire brigade extinguished the blaze.
Police secured evidence at the scene of the fires. The evidence pointed to arson, a police spokesman said, though the perpetrators’ identity remained unclear. Police said they were urgently appealing for witnesses.
A suspected arson attack also disrupted a major rail line in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia at the weekend on the main line between Dusseldorf and Cologne. Security sources suspected an act of sabotage.