Flood washes up dead in Hamburg
On Christmas Day, the fire department is called out to Hamburg-Nienstedten because of a landslide, and on Boxing Day because of a gruesome discovery. Walkers discover a lifeless body on the banks of the Elbe. Who the man is and what happened to him must now be clarified.
Floods may be part of everyday life in Hamburg, but everyone involved in the Hanseatic city would certainly have loved to have done without this discovery. On the morning of Boxing Day, a male body washed up in the water in the Mühlenberg marina in the Nienstedten district. According to several media reports, walkers found the lifeless body on the banks of the Elbe in the Altona district.
The discovery was immediately reported to the police and fire department at around 9.15 a.m., who were able to recover the body from the water shortly afterwards. This process was reportedly difficult due to the rising tide. According to Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR), haste was required to prevent the body from being swept away by the water.
There are no clues as to the identity of the deceased so far, said a police spokesman. It is being investigated whether he may have been reported missing. Forensic examinations should also shed light on how the man died. The investigating authorities have not yet been able to rule anything out, so they consider an accident, a crime or a suicide to be possible. NDR reported that the deceased had apparently only been in the water for a short time.
The site where the body was found is reportedly located on the northern bank of the Elbe between the Hamburg districts of Blankenese and Nienstedten, opposite the Airbus factory airport in Hamburg-Finkenwerder. There had already been a major fire department operation in the immediate vicinity on Christmas Day. A burst drinking water pipe had caused a landslide on the Elbuferweg, which damaged a restaurant, among other things. Fortunately, no one was injured by the tons of rubble.
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The Hamburg police are actively investigating the circumstances surrounding the deceased found near the Elbe, as international media outlets also report on this unfortunate event in the city. The body was discovered near the Mühlenberg marina in the Nienstedten district, and efforts were made to recover it before it was swept away by the rising tide.
Source: www.ntv.de
