BERLIN, Sept. 25 (Xinhua) -- RWE has launched an investigation into a cyber attack which led to a temporary shut-down of its website during the ongoing clearance of the occupied Hambach forest, the German energy company announced on Tuesday.
Speaking to press, RWE did not explicitly link environmental activists who are attempting to prevent the company from felling the Hambach forest to the cyber attack recorded on Monday afternoon.
The Essen-based energy provider merely said it had filed charges against an unknown suspect while simultaneously enlisting in-house IT specialists to look into the matter.
In the meanwhile, police in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia have continued with their clearance operations at a highly symbolic site for activists in the Hambach.
Security authorities ordered protestors on Tuesday to remove flowers and candles commemorating a 27-year-old journalist who recently fell to his death in the forest, so that a nearby treehouse could be dismantled.
The Hambach forest forms part of a property owned by German energy giant RWE which comprises the world's largest open pit brown coal mine.
The company plans to cut down 100 out of a remaining 200 hectares of woodland from October 2018, a development which is vehemently resisted by activists who have moved into the threatened area and built treehouses and makeshift barriers there.
A member of an activist group, known as "Operation Undergrowth" told the German press agency (dpa) earlier that some forest occupiers had by now already lived in Hambach for six years.
The police operation, which was temporarily stalled following the fatal accident of the journalist, is one of the largest to be recorded in North Rhine-Westphalia to date and is supported by reinforcements from other German states.
