Power was gradually being restored across Berlin on Wednesday after tens of thousands of households endured freezing temperatures without electricity for four days following a suspected far-left attack on the city’s power infrastructure, authorities said.
The outage began early Saturday morning when a fire broke out on a bridge carrying high-voltage power lines over the Teltow Canal in southwest Berlin. The blaze disrupted electricity supplies to around 45,000 households and 2,200 businesses, affecting an estimated 100,000 people across several districts of the German capital.
Although engineers managed to reconnect many customers within days, the scale of the damage meant repairs were slow. By Tuesday, approximately 25,500 households and 1,200 businesses were still without electricity, most of them in the affluent Zehlendorf district. Officials described the incident as Berlin’s longest blackout since the end of World War II.
Berlin’s power network operator said service was being restored progressively on Wednesday and expected all remaining households to be reconnected by the end of the day, according to the German news agency dpa. However, city authorities warned that full repairs to the damaged cables would not be completed until Thursday.
Investigators are focusing on a written claim of responsibility circulated online by a group identifying itself as part of the far-left scene. Headlined “Turning off the juice to the rulers,” the statement claimed responsibility for sabotaging a gas-fired power plant in Berlin’s Lichterfelde district.
The group said its objective was to strike at the fossil-fuel energy industry rather than cause widespread power outages.
Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has long monitored similar groups. It said so-called “Volcano Groups” have been carrying out attacks on infrastructure in Berlin and the neighboring state of Brandenburg since 2011.
In 2024, a separate attack on a power pylon supplying electricity to a Tesla factory near Berlin temporarily halted production at the site.
On Tuesday, Germany’s federal prosecutor’s office announced it had taken over the investigation from local authorities, citing suspicions of anti-constitutional sabotage, arson, and membership in a terrorist organization.
Such a move underscores the seriousness with which the federal government is treating the incident.
Berlin’s governing mayor, Kai Wegner, condemned the attack and emphasized the need to better protect critical infrastructure. He confirmed that roughly 300 meters of cable had been damaged in the fire and said repair crews were working around the clock to restore normal service.
The blackout has renewed debate in Germany over the vulnerability of energy infrastructure, particularly during winter, when outages pose serious risks to public health and safety. As temperatures remained below freezing during the disruption, residents relied on emergency heating measures and temporary accommodations.
Authorities said security around key infrastructure sites in Berlin has been tightened as investigations continue.