Deutsche Bahn blames technical issue for nationwide rail standstill

BERLIN, June 24 (Reuters) - German rail operator Deutsche Bahn said a technical update had caused disruption in its digital radio system which brought trains across the country to a standstill late on Tuesday, as a security source said nothing pointed to sabotage.

Train services resumed on Wednesday after one of the country's biggest ever such incidents, which hit passengers on long-distance and regional trains as well as some local transport networks in Europe's biggest economy.

"The cause of yesterday’s disruption to the GSM-R digital railway radio system appears to have been the scheduled replacement of a technical component," Philipp Nagl, head of Deutsche Bahn's infrastructure arm, said.

"We are analysing exactly how this led to the disruption as a matter of the highest priority," he added in a statement.

Amid repeated warnings from intelligence agencies that Germany's infrastructure is vulnerable to attack, a security source said there was no indication of external interference with the railway.

Deutsche Bahn has previously been targeted by what German authorities suspect were acts of sabotage, including attackers cutting fibre optic cables and forcing rail traffic to a halt.

The outage is the latest high-profile problem to hit state-owned Deutsche Bahn, which has faced mounting criticism in recent years over chronic delays, cancellations and poor service which critics say is a result of decades of underinvestment.

New CEO Evelyn Palla has announced a major overhaul.

"Following the rapid resolution of the problem overnight, rail services got off to a largely smooth start this morning, although there may still be occasional disruption," Deutsche Bahn said.

Late on Tuesday, Deutsche Bahn stopped all trains for around two hours, citing an outage in the Global System for Mobile Communications for Railways, GSM-R, the main communication tool between train drivers and traffic control centres.

(Reporting by Andreas Rinke, Christoph Steitz, Christine Uyanik and Christian Kraemer; writing by Christoph Steitz and Madeline Chambers, Editing by Franklin Paul, Jamie Freed and Stephen Coates)