Because of a bomb find at Müssen station in Schleswig-Holstein, the railway line between Hamburg and Berlin was completely closed on Tuesday morning. According to the police, the suspicious object was discovered at around 8.40 a.m. during construction work in the town of 1,200 inhabitants in the district of Herzogtum Lauenburg east of Hamburg. According to current knowledge, it could be a warhead.
The closure affects long-distance and regional traffic. According to a railway spokesperson speaking to the Hamburger Morgenpost, the line has been closed in both directions between Schwarzenbek and Büchen since about 9 a.m. Long-distance traffic will be diverted over a wide area, a railway spokesperson told the Deutsche Presse-Agentur, and there will be partial cancellations. The Berliner Zeitung reports that no ICE trains are currently running on the Berlin–Hamburg line. According to t-online, connections towards Rostock are also affected.
Diversion via Hanover, replacement service with buses
The railway recommends that travellers between Hamburg and Berlin switch to connections with a change in Hanover. According to t-online, long-distance trains on the Berlin–Hamburg–Amsterdam route are being diverted between Berlin and Osnabrück via Hanover; the stops Hamburg-Bergedorf and Hamburg-Harburg are omitted, and instead the trains stop in Hanover. The Berliner Zeitung names the affected stops as Berlin Hauptbahnhof, Berlin-Spandau, Hamburg Hauptbahnhof, Hagenow Land, Holthusen and Schwerin Hauptbahnhof. According to the report, travellers between Berlin and Ludwigslust can use regional transport.
In regional transport, the RE1 line between Hamburg and Rostock is particularly affected. According to Bild, Deutsche Bahn has set up a replacement service with buses for it. On the line between Hamburg and Schwerin, according to t-online, there are delays, diversions and train cancellations, and individual journeys towards Rostock Hauptbahnhof are cancelled. Passengers should check their specific connection before starting their journey in the DB Navigator or on bahn.de.
Evacuation under way, emergency shelter in the sports hall
Residents of Bahnhofstraße and Bergstraße in Müssen must leave their houses and flats before the planned defusing. According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the Federal Office of Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance announced that residents of two streets are affected. The Hamburger Morgenpost reports, citing the police, that residents within a radius of around 200 metres of the find site have been asked to leave their flats. An emergency shelter has been set up in the Müssen sports hall; anyone who cannot reach it independently should contact the emergency services on site. How many people are affected is not yet known.
According to the police, all construction work in the area was stopped immediately. “We are currently waiting for the explosive ordnance disposal service to arrive,” Bild quotes from the police statement. When the suspected unexploded bomb can be defused and the line reopened is open – so it is also not certain how long the restrictions on rail traffic will last.
The information about the find is so far not consistent. While the railway spoke on its website of the “defusing of a World War II bomb between Hamburg and Berlin”, according to information from a t-online reporter on site the find had initially not been clearly identified as an explosive device. The police themselves put it cautiously, saying that according to current knowledge it could be a warhead.
Editorial assessment: For commuters and long-distance travellers on the north–south axis, the closure is a considerable disruption, because the Hamburg–Berlin line is one of the most heavily used connections in German long-distance traffic. As long as the explosive ordnance disposal service is not on site and the defusing has not been completed, any time given for reopening remains speculation.
