Tens of thousands of homes in Berlin will be without electricity until Thursday as authorities struggle to repair power cables seriously damaged in a suspected arson attack, officials have said.
Some households may also be without heating as the outage has affected local systems at a time when the German capital is blanketed in snow and temperatures are hovering around freezing.
Emergency services were alerted early on Saturday that several high-voltage cables on a bridge near a power plant had gone up in flames.
Firefighters quickly extinguished the blaze, but about 45,500 homes and 2,200 businesses in districts in south-west Berlin were left without power, according to the grid operator Stromnetz Berlin.
