Left-wing extremists have taken credit for an arson attack in southwest Berlin early Saturday that plunged tens of thousands of homes into a blackout, according to local officials.

Approximately 45,000 households in Germany’s capital are expected to be without power — and likely heat — through Jan. 8 after a far-left militant group started the blaze near a power station, grid company Stromnetz Berlin said Saturday.

By Sunday, roughly 35,000 homes and 1,900 commercial entities were still waiting for power to be restored.

The fire was ignited near a heat and power station in Lichterfelde, just eight miles outside of Berlin, and damaged several high-voltage cables that supply electricity to some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the city, officials said.

In the wake of the attack, local media published a letter allegedly penned by the far-left activist organization Vulkangruppe, or “Volcano Group.” The arsonists claimed responsibility for the fire and said the attack was an “act of self-defence” and in solidarity with other eco-activists worldwide. 

In the letter, the Vulkangruppe apologized to the city’s “less affluent” residents detrimentally impacted by the outages. Still, it plainly stated it had little sympathy for “the many owners of villas.” 

“Power outages were not the goal of the action; the fossil fuel industry was,” the group wrote.

Iris Spranger, Berlin’s interior affairs minister, said that the letter was deemed “authentic by the security authorities.” 

“I condemn this inhumane attack on Berliners and visitors to the city in the strongest possible terms. The investigation is ongoing,” Spranger wrote on X.

Berlin’s Mayor Kai Wegner told a German news agency that the perpetrators were “clearly left-wing extremists” – and cited another suspected arson attack in September.

The prior inferno, which hasn’t been confirmed as an attack, left 50,000 households in Berlin without power. Multiple local outlets noted the similarities between the Vulkangruppe’s hallmarks and the attacks, citing its 2024 attack on the power supply of Tesla’s gigafactory in Gruenheide. 

The Tesla attack caused hundreds of millions of euros worth of damage and stalled production at the factory. The Vulkangruppe published a 2,500-word letter claiming responsibility, ripping the company for “devouring land, resources, people, and labor” and enforcing “extreme exploitative conditions.”

With Post wires