BERLIN: German authorities were Friday hunting a militant climate activist suspected of a spate of attacks on the power grid, the latest sabotage targeting critical infrastructure.<\/p>\n
The 48-year-old man, named in German media as Daniel V., sent letters claiming responsibility for the acts and suspected explosives were found during searches of his apartment, officials said.<\/p>\n
Germany has been rattled by attacks on electricity substations across the country this week which were apparently aimed at cutting power from coal-fired power stations and causing widespread blackouts.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe must assume that this is a case of climate extremism,\u201d Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt told journalists.<\/p>\n
The Bild tabloid reported that a heavily armed elite police team had stormed a truck in Hambach Forest in North Rhine-Westphalia suspected of belonging to the activist, but had failed to apprehend him.<\/p>\n
The area is highly symbolic for Germany\u2019s climate movement. Activists spent years protesting plans to raze vast tracts of forest to expand the nearby Hambach open-cast lignite mine.<\/p>\n
Earlier, police had raided the suspect\u2019s apartment in the town Gevelsberg, in western North Rhine-Westphalia state, after security officials and media received his letters claiming the attacks.<\/p>\n
They discovered \u201csuspicious substances and suspected explosive materials or devices\u201d, the state\u2019s interior minister Herbert Reul told journalists.<\/p>\n
– \u2018No justification\u2019 –<\/p>\n
The letters, which contained detailed descriptions of the attack plans, were presumed to be authentic, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe author cites as his motive the fight against fossil fuels,\u201d said Reul.<\/p>\n
However, the minister stressed that \u201cattacking critical infrastructure is a crime… There is no justification for this crime, no ideology that counts as an excuse.\u201d<\/p>\n
The attacks followed the same pattern, with firework-like devices used to shoot wires at overhead cables at substations in a bid to cause short circuits and cut power from nearby coal-powered plants.<\/p>\n
While there were no major outages, power-generating units at some plants had to be taken off the grid for a a time.<\/p>\n
The first attacked happened on Tuesday morning when a substation in eastern Brandenburg state was targeted, damaging power cables and briefly disrupting supply.<\/p>\n
A further attack followed later the same day targeting a substation in North Rhine-Westphalia.<\/p>\n
Authorities say he also confessed in his letter to planning further attacks, while devices to launch small rockets were found at other locations.<\/p>\n
Germany has faced a spate of attacks on the power grid in recent times, with far-left activists claiming responsibility in some cases.<\/p>\n
The most serious took place in Berlin in January, causing an electricity outage that left tens of thousands of homes and thousands of businesses without power for nearly a week in the middle of winter.<\/p>\n
The far-left \u201cVulkangruppe\u201d (Volcano Group) claimed responsibility for the arson attack on high-voltage cables that caused that blackout.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BERLIN: German authorities were Friday hunting a militant climate activist suspected of a spate of attacks on the power grid, the latest sabotage targeting critical infrastructure. The 48-year-old man, named in German media as Daniel V., sent letters claiming responsibility for the acts and suspected explosives were found during searches of his apartment, officials said. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":102631,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-102618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102618"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":102633,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102618\/revisions\/102633"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}