Berlin offers €1m reward for blackout culprits

BERLIN:

Germany is offering a one-million-euro reward for information leading to the arrest of suspected far-left militants whose arson attack caused a massive blackout in Berlin earlier this month, the interior minister said on Tuesday.

The electricity outage left roughly 45,000 homes and around 2,200 businesses without power for nearly a week in the middle of winter in the southwest of the German capital. Police are hunting members of the far-left "Vulkangruppe" (Volcano Group) which claimed responsibility.

Authorities have deemed the online messages from the mysterious Vulkangruppe "credible". Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt on Tuesday vowed to strike back. "I think it's appropriate to underscore the seriousness of the situation with a reward of this magnitude," Dobrindt said.

According to Germany's BfV domestic intelligence agency, the group has been active since 2011 and is also believed to be behind a number of other arson attacks in and around Berlin. It claimed responsibility for two sabotage attacks targeting electric carmaker Telsa's factory just outside Berlin.