Police vehicles and repair equipment at the scene to help repair damaged electricity cables at a bridge leading to the Lichterfelde power plant over Teltow Canal following an arson attack on January 4, 2026 in Berlin, Germany.<\/p>\n
Omer Messinger | Getty Images News | Getty Images<\/p>\n
A suspected arson attack has left tens of thousands of homes and businesses in Germany’s capital without electricity in near-freezing temperatures. <\/p>\n
A fire in southwest Berlin on Saturday prompted a major power outage, with around 45,000 households and 2,200 commercial entities across four districts affected, according<\/a> to grid operator Stromnetz Berlin. <\/p>\n The cause was identified<\/a> as a fire on a cable bridge over the Teltow Canal near the Lichterfelde power station, with several cables damaged as a result.<\/p>\n Approximately 10,000 households and 300 businesses in Berlin’s Lichterfelde district have since had electricity restored, Stromnetz Berlin said, although 35,000 households and 1,900 businesses remain affected. <\/p>\n The grid company said power for all customers is not expected to be restored until Thursday afternoon, at a time when Berlin is experiencing snowy conditions and sub-zero daily temperatures.<\/p>\n Local officials have attributed the power outage to an arson attack from The Vulkangruppe (The Volcano Group), a left-wing extremist group.<\/p>\n The Vulkangruppe reportedly<\/a> published a letter shortly after the attack, claiming responsibility for the incident. They said their actions were directed at the fossil fuel-based energy industry, citing the climate crisis<\/a> and buildout of artificial intelligence infrastructure<\/a>. CNBC has been unable to independently verify the letter.<\/p>\n “The contemptuous attack on our power grid was not left-wing extremism. That was left-wing terrorism, and that must be clearly stated as such,” Iris Spranger, Berlin’s interior affairs minister, said at a press conference on Monday. <\/p>\n “Here, collateral damage to the life and limb of people in #Berlin was deliberately accepted,” Spranger said, according to a Google translation of her comments posted on X.<\/p>\n The access road to a closed petrol station is blocked due to a power failure. After a cable bridge caught fire, 50,000 households and 2,000 businesses in south-west Berlin lost power.<\/p>\n Picture Alliance | Picture Alliance | Getty Images<\/p>\n The power outage comes around four months after a suspected arson attack<\/a> on power lines in southeast Berlin affected around 50,000 households. <\/p>\n Vulkangruppe previously<\/a> claimed responsibility for an attack on the power supply of Tesla’<\/a>s gigafactory near Berlin in 2024. The incident<\/a> forced Elon Musk<\/a>‘s company to halt production for a brief period.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Police vehicles and repair equipment at the scene to help repair damaged electricity cables at a bridge leading…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":494439,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[98170,45526,81,10109,285,66,5495,117,50,3345,141,103],"class_list":{"0":"post-494438","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-alternative-and-sustainable-energy","9":"tag-berlin","10":"tag-business-news","11":"tag-climate","12":"tag-climate-change","13":"tag-elon-musk","14":"tag-energy","15":"tag-germany","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-oil-and-gas","18":"tag-tesla-inc","19":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115843439413758942","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=494438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494438\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/494439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=494438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=494438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=494438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}