Arson attack on defense company plant in Munich, two Bulgarians detained

Around midnight in Munich, unknown assailants threw two incendiary devices from a moving car onto a construction site, German outlet Bild reports. One of the devices ignited near building containers, but a police patrol arrived quickly and put out the fire.

The target of the attack was a company that manufactures secure communication systems and supplies them to the German armed forces. Shortly after the incident, police detained two suspects at a nearby petrol station.

According to media reports, those detained are a 28-year-old woman and a man ten years her senior — both Bulgarian nationals. The exact motive behind the attack has yet to be established, though police have already stated that it appears to have had a political background.

A wave of sabotage across Germany

The Munich arson came just hours after acts of sabotage targeting Germany's power grid. On Wednesday, twenty homemade explosive devices were discovered at a substation in the state of Brandenburg. They were designed to fling copper wires into high-voltage lines, triggering a short circuit.

A similar incident was reported at a substation near Bergheim, close to Cologne, where local residents said they saw flashes of light and heard explosions. Both cases are being investigated as possible acts of terrorism.

Tensions are further inflamed by a statement made by the German government on Monday, in which Berlin claimed that the Kremlin was behind August's drone attack on Leipzig Airport. Following the accusation, relations between Germany and Russia grew sharply strained, with Russian officials threatening retaliation against any German countermeasures.

Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz