Hamburg : sabotaging the freight traffic of one of Europe’s largest ports.
[On the night of Thursday September 7 to Friday September 8, a triple sabotage attack was carried out on the rail freight traffic of one of Europe’slargest ports (Hamburg ranks just behind Rotterdam and Antwerp in terms of tonnage). At around 2.40 a.m., a cable fire was reported on the rail bypass north of the city, at Deelwisch Street. Then at around 3 a.m., a second fire was reported to the southeast on a railroad line in the Walter-Rudolphi-Weg area of Allermöhe, and finally a third at around 3.40 a.m. directly on the Hamburger Hafenbahn line at Heykenaukamp. In each case, signalling and communication cables located in shafts along the tracks were destroyed by the arson attacks.
As well as impacting container train traffic to and from the Port, the sabotage also affected long-distance passenger trains, particularly between Germany’s two largest cities (Hamburg and Berlin), where on Friday 11 trains were completely cancelled, 17 were partially cancelled and 21 were significantly delayed. Passenger rail traffic will not return to normal until Sunday, and needless to say, this sabotage has caused an outcry across the Rhine from the authorities, with Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing, for example, castigating “climate extremists” (Klimaextremisten) who “have lowered their inhibition threshold yet again” with “such attacks, which constitute a form of terrorism”.
Below is a translation from the German of the communique issued on the same day (September 8) on de.indymedia].
