NBI probes into Finland-Germany submarine cable damage

The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) on Tuesday has opened an investigation into the damage of submarine cable between Finland and Germany in the Baltic Sea, said the NBI in a press release.

The NBI received the request for an investigation in this regard and started work to find out details about the incident.

Timo Kilpeläinen, head of the Investigation Department of NBI, said during a press conference on Tuesday that Finnish and Swedish police would jointly investigate the incident, reported Xinhua.

He noted that the damage to the C-Lion1 cable was located just several dozen nautical miles from where the Lithuania-Sweden cable was damaged last Sunday.

Ari-Jussi Knaapila, CEO of Cinia, told the press conference that a repair ship dispatched from France is expected to reach the site of the C-Lion1 damage by Sunday.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Petteri Orpo on Tuesday said it was not possible to say at this moment that whether it was a sabotage.

Talking to journalists at Aalto University in Espoo he said that it was not proper time to draw a conclusion in this regard, local media reported.

Meanwhile, German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said on Tuesday that damage to communication cables between Finland and Germany was likely sabotage, reported dpa.

"No one believes that these cables were cut by mistake," Pistorius said in Brussels at an EU defence ministers meeting to discuss the different threats facing the European Union.

Finnish state-owned company Cinia officials said they believe the cable broke at the bottom of the Baltic Sea and was severed by an external force, such as an anchor or a bottom trawl, the dpa report added.

The submarine cable between Finland and Germany went out of service on Monday morning due to a fault.