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United StatesFour power plants attacked in the west of the country
Sunday’s attack on four power plants in the northwestern US state of Washington raises fears of a potential targeted campaign by far-right groups, after authorities issued earlier federal warnings.
A New Jersey power plant (illustration).
AFP extension
The failure of four power plants in Pierce County, a southern Seattle suburb, cut power to more than 14,000 homes on Christmas Day, local police said.
An investigation was opened, but no suspects were arrested on Sunday, the police detailed in a press release, assuring that for the moment they were unable to know whether or not it was a coordinated attack. Police, however, said they were aware of similar events elsewhere in Washington state as well as in Oregon (Northwest) and North Carolina (Southeast).
Federal police also warned in early December of threats to the power grid of the Tacoma Public Utilities company, which owns two of the sabotaged facilities, according to a press release. The militants of violent extremist groups “have developed credible and targeted plans to attack electricity infrastructure since at least 2020,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a report last January, quoted by US media.
Cause “general chaos”
In early December, an estimated 45,000 homes and businesses were plunged into darkness in Moore County, North Carolina after a gun attack on two electrical transformers. The attack came a year after the same state indicted five men, alleged members of white supremacist and neo-Nazi chat groups, accused of planning bombings of power plants.
They sought to wreak “general chaos” “in order to create a state centered on white ethnicity,” according to the indictment. While in (Northern) Ohio, three men associated with the neo-Nazi movement pleaded guilty in February to using handguns and explosives to damage several power plants in various locations.
(AFP extension)
