(Reuters) -Dozens of commercial vehicles from Amazon and Deutsche Telekom were put on fire in the early hours of Tuesday, German media reported, with police saying they are investigating politically motivated arson attacks.
Berlin police said in a statement that 17 vehicles belonging to a telecommunications company were damaged by fire. The fire brigade, which was called in after loud bangs were heard, put out the fires.
The statement also said a delivery company’s 18 vehicles burnt out at a separate site, with a further five vehicles getting damaged in the blaze. It said that no people were hurt.
Newspaper B.Z. and broadcaster RBB reported separately that the companies affected were Amazon and Deutsche Telekom.
The police declined to disclose the company names and also would not say whether anyone had claimed responsibility for the attacks.
Amazon condemned the act, a spokesperson told Reuters, while Deutsche Telekom said it could not comment on pending investigations.
Later on Tuesday, a far-left anti-war group published a statement on a media blog, claiming responsibility for the attacks.
It linked the attacks to the opening of Amazon’s new offices in Berlin, which took place on Monday, and the military use of technologies developed by both companies.
Reuters could not independently verify the statement.
Last year, a far-left militant group calling itself “Volcano group shutting down Tesla” claimed responsibility for an arson attack on a power pylon that halted production for days at Tesla’s car factory outside Berlin.
The authorities in the German capital had previously blamed a number of arson attacks in Berlin since 2011 on similar left-wing “volcano groups”.
It was not immediately clear whether the latest fires were related to those earlier attacks.
(Reporting by Ludwig Burger and Isabel DemetzEditing by Rachel More and Tomasz Janowski)
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