Blast rocks German explosives manufacturing plant – media

A powerful detonation at the Diehl Defence explosives manufacturing plant in the city of Troisdorf, Germany has left two workers with serious injuries, local media reported on Friday. Another of the company’s factories went up in flames in Berlin in May, prompting several news outlets to speculate that the incident may have been the result of Russian sabotage.

In recent months, a number of Western officials, including NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg as well as media outlets, have alleged that Moscow has intensified its sabotage campaign on European soil. Moscow’s presumed endgame is to disrupt the delivery of Western weapons to Ukraine and the training of Kiev’s troops abroad.

The Kremlin has consistently denied these claims.

On Friday, Bild quoted Lars Godel, the head of the Troisdorf fire department, who confirmed that they had been called to the site of an explosion inside an industrial building that was “considerably damaged” as a result.

The two employees who sustained serious injuries managed to escape the building on their own, and were rushed to a hospital by helicopter.

Police officers working at the scene to establish the cause of the blast have preliminarily attributed it to an industrial accident, according to Bild.

The firm produces, among other arms, the IRIS-T air defense system, several units of which the German government has supplied to Ukraine since late 2022.

The following month, Bild and the Wall Street Journal claimed that Moscow might have had a hand in the incident.

Over this past month alone, there have been numerous scares at several German military facilities over a drone threat, a suspected breach, as well as fears over alleged water supply contamination.

Back in April, German authorities said they had arrested two German-Russian dual nationals on suspicion of planning to sabotage local military infrastructure, including US bases, on the orders of Russia’s security services.

Commenting on reported allegations of Russian sabotage activities in the West, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov insisted in July that “all these assumptions and claims are baseless and are nothing more than an incitement of Russophobic hysteria.”