Saboteurs launched a coordinated attack on France’s high-speed rail network in the early hours of this morning, using arson and vandalism at multiple sites to disrupt services ahead of the Olympics opening ceremony, AFP reports.
The attacks led to cancellations on the country’s Atlantic, northern, and eastern lines, affecting around 800,000 passengers.
French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said the consequences were “huge and serious” for the rail network.
Repairs are expected to be time consuming and labour-intensive.
Rail operator SNCF chief executive Jean-Pierre Farandou said the attackers had started fires in “conduits carrying multiple (fibre-optic) cables” that carry safety information for drivers or control the motors for points.
“There’s a huge number of bundled cables. We have to repair them one by one, it’s a manual operation” that required hundreds of workers, he said.
“We ask people please not to come to the station, because if you haven’t heard from us, your train won’t be running,” said Christophe Fanichet, SNCF’s passenger services chief said.
SNCF said vandals had also damaged signal boxes along the lines connecting Paris with cities like Lille in the north, Bordeaux in the west, and Strasbourg in the east.
An attack on the Paris-Marseille line was foiled.
“Our intelligence services and law enforcement are mobilised to find and punish the perpetrators of these criminal acts,” Prime Minister Attal said on X.
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