By SPA
Prague : Thieves managed to steal a four-ton iron railway bridge on an unused track in the western Czech Republic, DPA quoted local police sources as saying Monday.
A witness told the police that the single-railed bridge near the western-Bohemian town of Cheb had “suddenly disappeared” between early December and mid January, Cheb police spokeswoman Martina Hruskova said.
“I can’t recall anything similar of this magnitude,” she told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
The police believe that the unknown perpetrators dismantled the iron bridge to sell it for scrap. The Czech Republic has been plagued by such thefts of metal in the form of wires, cables or manhole covers.
In early July, a disappearance of 48 bronze reliefs from the Red Army tombstones at a Prague cemetery even resulted in a short-lived diplomatic spat between the Czech Republic and Russia.
Later that month, two men died and four were seriously injured in the collapse of a former steelworks building in the town of Kladno.
The men were taking apart the hall’s metal framework with the intention of selling it to a scrapyard, officials said.