Swedish police said on Friday they were investigating a suspected case of sabotage of an undersea telecoms cable in the Baltic Sea, and the country’s coast guard deployed a vessel to the area where multiple seabed cables have been damaged in recent months.

The authorities are looking into possible damage to an undersea line east of Gotland island. NATO has stepped up its surveillance of the region.

A string of incidents involving damage to cables and other infrastructure in the Baltic Sea have occurred in recent months, amid soaring tensions between the West and Russia over Moscow's war in Ukraine.