Police look into possible sabotage behind Schiphol train outage

Dutch police are investigating whether a fire that brought train services to a halt near Schiphol airport on Tuesday was the result of criminal sabotage, news website Nu.nl said on Tuesday afternoon.

The fire, which broke out in a power cable around 3:45 am, caused a major disruption to train traffic from Amsterdam, Utrecht and Lelystad to the airport.

A police spokesperson told Nu.nl officers are “explicitly” considering the possibility of a crime. Forensic teams are examining the site where the fire started, but the investigation was delayed until the power lines could be safely disconnected. Investigators have since secured evidence at the scene, police said.

ProRail, the national rail infrastructure agency, is also conducting its own investigation and said it is taking “all possible scenarios” into account. A spokesman declined to speculate further.

The incident coincided with road closures around The Hague due to the Nato summit, making the disruption especially difficult for travellers. David van Weel, the outgoing justice and security minister, said from the Nato meeting that sabotage has not been ruled out.

“That is one of the things we are investigating,” he said. “It could be an activist group, another country — anything is possible. The most important thing now is to repair the cables and get transport moving again.”

Rail operator NS said no trains would run between Schiphol, Amsterdam Centraal, Utrecht Centraal and Lelystad until 11 pm. Services from Rotterdam, The Hague and Leiden resumed shortly after 8:15 am. A separate outage is also affecting the line between Hoofddorp and Amsterdam Sloterdijk.

A ProRail spokesperson called the timing of the outage “very unfortunate” given the Nato summit.

An NS spokesperson could not confirm whether the summit was making trains busier, but advised travellers to seek alternative transport. NS is not deploying replacement buses, saying the impact of the outage is too widespread.