Police are investigating how two fishermen drowned in calm waters in the Elbe river near Hamburg on Sunday evening.
Emergency services launched a search for the men at 5.28pm after their boat capsized in front of the entrance to a marina at Wedel west of Hamburg.
Both men, aged 24 and 28, drowned immediately, but it is unclear how the boat capsized.
Police said in a statement that divers and a helicopter were deployed and the bodies were retrieved at around 9pm.
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Callers to the emergency numbers 110 and 112 weren’t able to reach operators Thursday morning in several German states.
The emergency number 110 for police and 112 for fire crews failed around the country early Thursday morning, with callers unable to reach emergency operators for urgent assistance between about 4:30 am and 5:40 am local time.
The Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Aid is looking into these outages, which were reported in states including Lower Saxony, Baden-Württemberg, and Brandenburg, and in major cities like Berlin, Cologne, Hamburg, and Frankfurt. Cologne was further affected by cuts to electricity, drinking water, and regular telephone services. Lower Saxony also saw disruptions to the internal phone networks of police and hospitals.
Emergency services are not reporting any more disturbances and people should be able to once again reach 110 and 112 around the country as normal.
Investigators are looking into the problem, but haven’t yet established a cause or any consequences that may have happened due to the outage. Provider Deutsche Telekom says they have ruled out the possibility of an attack by hackers.
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