A major outage disrupted parts of the Dutch railway network during Tuesday’s morning rush hour after materials were deliberately placed on tracks at several locations, prompting infrastructure operator ProRail to treat the incident as possible sabotage.
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“Materials deliberately placed on the tracks have been found at several locations,” ProRail said, adding that the objects had caused track-circuit failures.
According to Ukraine’s Centre for Strategic Communication and Information Security (CSCIS), the materials included pipes and other objects that were deliberately fixed to or placed on railway tracks. One train struck material left on the line but remained on the tracks, with no injuries reported, the centre said.
The incidents were reported along the Utrecht-Arnhem, Amersfoort-Deventer and Gouda-Oudewater routes. The interference affected signalling and safety systems as well as some railway crossings, disrupting both train and road traffic, according to CSCIS, the Ukrainian government body that monitors and counters disinformation and information threats.
National railway operator NS said services around the central cities of Zwolle, Deventer and Amersfoort were severely affected. The disruption was so extensive that the operator said it could not provide enough replacement buses for stranded passengers. It was not immediately clear when services would return to normal.
There was no immediate indication of who was behind the suspected sabotage or what the motive was. CSCIS described the incident as another suspected act of Russian terrorism in the European Union, but Dutch authorities have not publicly attributed the railway disruption to Russia.
The disruption came as the Dutch government was due to present its annual budget to parliament, an event that draws thousands of people to The Hague to watch the royal family travel through the city in horse-drawn carriages.
Investigators were also examining whether the coordinated incidents could be connected to Prinsjesdag, the annual opening of the Dutch parliamentary year, according to CSCIS.
