German Police Defuse Grenade Found in Red Army Faction Suspect's Home

German police officers guard a building where Daniela Klette, a 65-year-old alleged member of Germany's notorious Red Army Faction (RAF) militant group, has been arrested after decades on the run from armed robbery and attempted murder charges, in Berlin, Germany, February 28, 2024 - Reuters
German police officers guard a building where Daniela Klette, a 65-year-old alleged member of Germany's notorious Red Army Faction (RAF) militant group, has been arrested after decades on the run from armed robbery and attempted murder charges, in Berlin, Germany, February 28, 2024 - Reuters
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German Police Defuse Grenade Found in Red Army Faction Suspect's Home

German police officers guard a building where Daniela Klette, a 65-year-old alleged member of Germany's notorious Red Army Faction (RAF) militant group, has been arrested after decades on the run from armed robbery and attempted murder charges, in Berlin, Germany, February 28, 2024 - Reuters
German police officers guard a building where Daniela Klette, a 65-year-old alleged member of Germany's notorious Red Army Faction (RAF) militant group, has been arrested after decades on the run from armed robbery and attempted murder charges, in Berlin, Germany, February 28, 2024 - Reuters

The Berlin apartment block in which a suspected Red Army Faction (RAF) militant lived during three decades on the run had to be evacuated on Wednesday after authorities found a grenade in her apartment, police said.

Daniela Klette, 65, and two other suspects are alleged to have belonged to the third generation of the leftist militant group which from the early 1970s committed a string of murders and kidnappings of government officials, US soldiers and German diplomats, originally in protest against the Vietnam war.

"Our specialists have so far removed one grenade from the flat on Sebastianstrasse in (Berlin's) Kreuzberg and defused it in a safe place," police wrote on social media. "Other objects are still being examined."

It was unclear if a person detained on Tuesday and released the following morning was linked to the two remaining suspects: Burkhard Garweg, 55, and Ernst-Volker Staub, 69, who have also been at large for 30 years. Authorities declined to comment on media reports of a third arrest on Wednesday, according to AFP.

The charges against the three relate not to the militant group's political crimes but to bank robberies and at least one attempted murder committed between 1991 and 2016 to finance their life underground.

It remained unclear where Klette, now in custody in the northern city of Bremen after her arrest in Berlin's Kreuzberg district, hid out over the past three decades, though newspaper Die Welt published footage appearing to show her dancing at a Berlin carnival in 2011.



Traffic on French High-Speed Trains Gradually Improving after Sabotage

Workers operate to reconnect the signal box to the track in its technical ducts in Vald' Yerres, near Chartres on July 26, 2024, as France's high-speed rail network was hit by an attack disrupting the transport system, hours before the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. (AFP)
Workers operate to reconnect the signal box to the track in its technical ducts in Vald' Yerres, near Chartres on July 26, 2024, as France's high-speed rail network was hit by an attack disrupting the transport system, hours before the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. (AFP)
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Traffic on French High-Speed Trains Gradually Improving after Sabotage

Workers operate to reconnect the signal box to the track in its technical ducts in Vald' Yerres, near Chartres on July 26, 2024, as France's high-speed rail network was hit by an attack disrupting the transport system, hours before the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. (AFP)
Workers operate to reconnect the signal box to the track in its technical ducts in Vald' Yerres, near Chartres on July 26, 2024, as France's high-speed rail network was hit by an attack disrupting the transport system, hours before the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. (AFP)

Traffic on France's TGV high-speed trains was gradually returning to normal on Saturday after engineers worked overnight repairing sabotaged signal stations and cables that caused travel chaos on Friday, the opening day of the Paris Olympic Games.

In Friday's pre-dawn attacks on the high-speed rail network vandals damaged infrastructure along the lines connecting Paris with cities such as Lille in the north, Bordeaux in the west and Strasbourg in the east. Another attack on the Paris-Marseille line was foiled, French rail operator SNCF said.

There has been no immediate claim of responsibility.

"On the Eastern high-speed line, traffic resumed normally this morning at 6:30 a.m. while on the North, Brittany and South-West high-speed lines, 7 out of 10 trains on average will run with delays of 1 to 2 hours," SNCF said in a statement on Saturday morning.

"At this stage, traffic will remain disrupted on Sunday on the North axis and should improve on the Atlantic axis for weekend returns," it added.

SNCF reiterated that transport plans for teams competing in the Olympics would be guaranteed.