Hamburg airport closed due to missing man

Federal police in Hamburg say they began a partial lockdown of the city’s airport on Friday out of an abundance of caution after a man accidentally opened the facility’s escape routes and entered a restricted security zone at 9:45 a.m. local time (0745 GMT).

Police say it is unclear what the man’s intentions were when he pressed the button that opened the escape route, allowing him to wander into the restricted area.

The incident led to a mass evacuation of both the security area and the aircraft.

An airport spokesperson later confirmed that “the precautionary measures taken by the Federal Police have ended and passengers are now passing through security again,” adding that “flight operations are resuming.”

Nevertheless, the speaker said significant delays and flight cancellations would continue throughout the day.

good day From the DW newsroom in Bonn where we begin our coverage of the day’s news, with passengers in Hamburg forced to deal with evacuations, flight cancellations and massive delays after accidentally opening escape routes by pressing an emergency button and entering a restricted security zone.

Police say flights have now resumed but additional delays will continue throughout the day.

In the northern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, state environment minister Till Backhaus presented a postmortem report on a humpback whale that made headlines for weeks after it stranded in German waters in March.

Backhaus said the creature wandered for several days before scientists lost signal from a tracking device attached to its tail fin. The cause of the whale’s death is unclear.

Inflation numbers in Germany have declined slightly, data shows, although the economic recovery remains weak. The decline is reportedly due to the introduction of fuel rebates, aimed at relieving pressure on consumers who are still suffering from the global oil shortage, caused, among other things, by the war launched by the US and Israel against Iran on May 1 and the subsequent closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a major oil transit route.