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Sicherheitskreise vermuten einen Sabotageakt.
Image: dpa
Following a fire on the railroad line between Düsseldorf and Cologne, a letter claiming responsibility has surfaced. Sabotage is now suspected. The line remains closed.
The major rail line between Düsseldorf and Cologne has reportedly been shut down by an arson attack. Security sources have indicated that an act of sabotage is suspected. A purported claim of responsibility appeared on the left-wing platform indymedia.org. The Cologne public prosecutor’s office and police also stated that investigators currently believe the fire was set intentionally.
The rail line has been closed since Friday. It is still unclear when trains will resume regular service. The railway company described the damage as “immense.”
“Acts like these are not protests, but deliberate acts of sabotage,” said North Rhine-Westphalia Interior Minister Herbert Reul (CDU) in response to the latest arson attack. Such acts disrupt the daily lives of many people and willfully accept “collateral damage.”
“These troublemakers claim they want to create a world where plants, animals, and people are better off. And then they carry out an arson attack, of all times, right when drought is rampant everywhere,” Reul said. “That alone shows: These people don’t want a better world. These people want chaos. They aim to replace politics with violence. We will not accept that.”
The letter was published under the name of the group “Kommando Angry Birds,” which has already been linked to several attacks on railroad lines. In it, the group claims responsibility “for the sabotage of the railroad line north of Leverkusen.” Incendiary devices were reportedly placed in a large cable shaft at the northeastern corner of the Wupper Bridge and in a narrower shaft. The motive cited for the attack was “mass extinction” caused by “technological escalation,” which must be stopped.
Security officials believe the letter is genuine, according to the German Press Agency. It is considered unlikely that a technical malfunction could have caused the embankment fire along the railroad track.
Following the fire in the cable trench near Leverkusen-Rheindorf, the criminal investigation department is seeking witnesses. According to initial reports, technicians noticed the fire on the railroad bridge spanning the Wupper River, near Solinger Strasse, on Friday morning and alerted the fire department.
A spokesperson for the Cologne Police Department said in response to an inquiry that an investigation was underway to determine whether the letter claiming responsibility was authentic. As part of such an investigation, authorities are also examining whether there might be any connections to other crimes. The Cologne Police Department’s State Security Division had already taken over the investigation on Friday, as a political motive could not be ruled out.
About a year ago, the far-left extremist group “Kommando Angry Birds” also claimed responsibility for an attack on the main rail line between Düsseldorf and Duisburg. There, too, incendiary devices had been set off in July 2025. The important rail line was closed for days.
In early January of this year, the group also claimed responsibility for an attempted attack on a substation in Erkrath, near Düsseldorf. The attack failed.
A year ago, Interior Minister Reul had already warned about the “Angry Birds Commando.” “They’ve carried out multiple acts of sabotage in the Düsseldorf area in recent years,” he had said in early August 2025. For example, attacks on telecommunications towers in the town of Langenfeld/Erkrath and a tunnel fire on Highway 46 were attributed to the group. The investigations were being conducted with great effort but were not entirely straightforward because the group was not a tightly knit organization.
One day after the fire, it was still unclear when the closed section between Düsseldorf and Cologne would reopen. On Saturday afternoon, a spokeswoman for Deutsche Bahn said that no estimate could currently be given as to when the line would be operational again. The closure is causing detours, delays, and the cancellation of some trains on both local and long-distance routes.
According to Deutsche Bahn, the investigation is ongoing. “DB experts are working around the clock to repair the extensive damage,” the company said in a statement. According to the railway company, the embankment between Langenfeld and Leverkusen caught fire in two places on Friday morning. The fire department extinguished the fires, but the fire caused damage to several signal cables, meaning that no trains can run on that section of the line.
The railway company described “the current operational situation in North Rhine-Westphalia” as “very tense.” In addition to the possible sabotage on the Düsseldorf–Cologne line, the cause was also damage to a bridge in Opladen near Leverkusen that was only discovered on Friday. The damaged bridge is located on the Hagen–Wuppertal–Cologne corridor, which had just been put back into service following a complete renovation.
11.07.2026, 16:50
