FRANKFURT—Berlin blamed sabotage for an outage that temporarily shut down train traffic across northern Germany on Saturday, raising tension in the country two weeks after explosions damaged key gas pipelines between Germany and Russia.
It was “clearly a deliberate act” in which crucial communication cables were “consciously and deliberately cut” in two separate locations, German Transport Minister Volker Wissing told reporters Saturday afternoon local time.
Deutsche Bahn, the country’s national railway operator, said that because of the damage to the cables, “which are indispensable for train traffic, Deutsche Bahn had to stop train traffic in the north for almost three hours this morning.”
It said the incident had disabled communication with trains and stranded thousands of passengers at the start of the weekend in the states of Lower Saxony, Bremen, Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein. Traffic had resumed by late morning, according to the company, which warned that some disruption would persist.
The incident will add to mounting concern in Europe about the safety of critical infrastructure, including energy, power and communications.
The accusation of sabotage comes as European authorities investigate a series of blasts off the coast in northern Germany last week that damaged the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines that link Russian gas fields to Europe.
Swedish investigators said Thursday that the blasts, which occurred in international waters near Sweden and Denmark, were likely deliberate, strengthening the theory of a sabotage operation.
The explosions ruptured both strands of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline and one of Nord Stream 2’s two strands under the Baltic Sea, causing large amounts of gas to leak into the sea for days, disrupting ship traffic.
Russia for months throttled gas delivery via Nord Stream 1, eventually stopping it altogether in September. Nord Stream 2 was never used because Germany suspended its certification around the time of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
The choking of Russian gas supplies to Europe has put pressure on governments as they work together to punish Moscow for its war of aggression in Ukraine. Natural gas is a critical energy source in Germany especially, powering factories and heating many of the nation’s homes.
Write to Tom Fairless at tom.fairless@wsj.com
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