A suspected arson attack on a cable connected to one of Berlin’s largest gas-fired power plants has knocked out power in the German capital’s southern districts and left tens of thousands of homes and businesses without electricity.
According to the Politico report, an extreme left-wing group calling itself the Vulkan Group claimed responsibility in a letter published online. The blackout affected about 45,000 households and more than 2,000 businesses, turning the incident into one of the city’s most disruptive acts of sabotage in recent years. The group also claimed it wanted to cause damage to the gas industry and to what it called the greed for energy.
Berlin Mayor Kai Wegner called the attack terrorism. The city’s police believed the claim letter to be genuine, suggesting investigators were treating the declaration not as a prank or empty boast but as a likely authentic statement from the perpetrators.
The disruption lasted beyond the initial outage. With temperatures below freezing, schools and kindergartens in the affected southern districts were closed on Monday morning. Around 30,000 households and about 1,700 businesses were still without power on the third day, and full restoration was expected to take until Thursday.
The attack has also sharpened political pressure over the security of critical infrastructure. Franziska Giffey, Berlin’s energy senator, said the city needs better protection of systems that are widely visible and therefore vulnerable. She also suggested prosecutors at the national level may need to become involved. Her concern was not only about ideology but about whether something larger was behind the attack.
That wider question remains unresolved. What is clear is that the sabotage hit infrastructure that Berlin depends on for heating, transport and daily life in winter. By targeting a cable linked to a power plant, the attackers managed to create a citywide problem that quickly spread well beyond the site itself.
The claim of responsibility also matters because the group is said to be known to Berlin’s intelligence services as a left-wing extremist organization and has used similar methods before. That history gives the current case added weight for investigators, who now face the challenge of proving both who acted and whether the attack fits into a broader pattern.
For residents, the immediate issue is practical: when the lights, schools and business premises will return to normal. For authorities, it is strategic: how to protect infrastructure that is both essential and physically exposed. The attack has forced Berlin to confront both questions at once.
