Russia May Be Behind Attack on Diehl Arms Plant in Berlin Last Month – Bild

Russian agents may have been involved in the fire at the Diehl Metall in Berlin in early May, Bild reports.

Evidence of Russian involvement in the fire was passed on to the German Cabinet of Ministers by a foreign intelligence service, Bild reports.

Seven weeks after the fire, Diehl's management stated that the cause of the fire was a technical malfunction.

The plant is part of the German concern Diehl Defense, which produces, among other things, Iris-T air defense systems for Ukraine. However, Diehl's Berlin division was exclusively engaged in metal processing, for example, for cars, and not in weapons production.

Berlin is currently studying the intelligence. But as Bild writes, it is still unclear why the metallurgical rather than the military Diehl plant was chosen.

The plant in southwestern Berlin caught fire on May 3, and the entire western part of the capital was then enveloped in toxic smoke. Rescue services reported that four floors of the building had completely burned down, and part of the building had collapsed.

In 2022, the company, with the assistance of the German government, transferred its IRIS-T to Ukraine for the first time.

There have been a string of fires at arms and ammunition factories this year.

An explosion took place at the Mesko arms plant in Poland that produces the kinds of weapons and munitions in use with the Ukrainian military on Monday, June 10, with casualties reported.

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In April, Kyiv Post reported an explosion at a BAE Systems weapons manufacturing site in South Wales.

The day before the BAE Systems fire, firefighters responded to a fire at the ammunition manufacturer General Dynamics, in Scranton Pennsylvania due to a fire that reportedly had started along the production line of the aging US factory.

In November 2023, the owner of Bulgarian arms manufacturer Emco accused Moscow of staging multiple explosions at his facilities over the years.

A recent investigative report by The Insider established that a couple in Czechia, employed by Russian intelligence, was involved in coordinating the ammunition depot explosions in 2014 in Czechia among other high-profile espionage cases.