Overview

• Unknown perpetrators opened an underground shaft near Leverkusen and cut fibre and signal cables, disabling the Leverkusen signal box and forcing a full closure of the corridor until Monday evening.
• The line has reopened and police classify the incident as sabotage, with no suspects identified and investigations by local police, federal authorities and state security ongoing.
• On Tuesday morning, service between Lindern and Heinsberg was halted after smoke rose from a cable shaft, and separate track fires in the Ruhrgebiet briefly closed routes between Duisburg, Mülheim and Oberhausen; any connection remains unclear.
• The episode is reported as at least the tenth sabotage targeting rail infrastructure in North Rhine-Westphalia since early 2020, following earlier cable fires and cuts including August attacks linked by an unverified claim from a group calling itself Kommando Angry Birds.
• Security officials say fully guarding a 33,000‑kilometre network is not feasible, and Deutsche Bahn points to digital interlocking as a longer‑term step to make signalling more resilient by enabling alternative routing.