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BERLIN (Reuters) – A German military base near Cologne airport has temporarily confined thousands of troops there, warning them not to drink tap water after suspected sabotage, the German Territorial Command said on Wednesday.
A guard detected a hole in a fence near the barracks’ water treatment plant in the morning, leading to a search for the perpetrator of the intrusion, the Territorial Command reported in a press release.
“The water supply was cut off because the drinking water system showed unusual values,” it says.
The military base, which has 4,300 soldiers and 1,200 civilian employees, was reopened in the afternoon, but a ban on the use of tap water was maintained as a precautionary measure pending the results of the tests, a source said.
The Cologne-Wahn base is home to the fleet of military aircraft used for the travel of Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his ministers.
A NATO base near Geilenkirchen has stepped up security after the Cologne incident but has not locked down the area. A German military spokesman had previously said the base had been closed.
(Sabine Siebold and Matthias Inverardi; French version Kate Entringer, edited by Zhifan Liu)
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