Due to a power outage caused by a cable fire along the tracks, no trains are running on Tuesday, June 24th, between the Netherlands’s main airport, Schiphol, and the stations in Utrecht and Amsterdam. Rail operator NS has warned that the disruption could last until at least 11 p.m., with full restoration delayed by significant damage requiring extensive cable repairs.
ProRail, the organisation responsible for the maintenance of the national railway network infrastructure, reported that the blaze damaged around 30 cables but didn’t specify whether it was accidental or intentional.
Dutch Justice Minister David van Weel, speaking during the NATO summit in The Hague, emphasized that sabotage has not been ruled out, and investigators are considering possibilities ranging from copper theft and activist involvement to foreign-state interference.
The outage coincides with heightened security for the two-day NATO summit, triggering the country’s largest-ever security operation, involving 27,000 police and 10,000 defence personnel.
Leaders arriving for the summit are not taking trains: they are being whisked in motorcades along closed-down roads from the airport to hotels and the summit venue.
On Monday, pro-Russian hackers launched a series of attacks on several municipalities and organisations linked to the NATO summit.
