France's train network hit by arson attacks hours before Olympic ceremony
World
France’s train network hit by arson attacks hours before Olympic ceremony
PARIS (Reuters) - Saboteurs struck France's TGV high-speed train network in a series of pre-dawn attacks across the country, causing travel chaos and exposing security gaps ahead of the Paris Olympics opening ceremony later on Friday.
The coordinated sabotage took place as France mounted a massive security operation involving tens of thousands of police and soldiers to safeguard the capital for the sporting extravaganza, sucking in security resources from across the country.
SNCF, the state-owned railway operator, said vandals had damaged signal substations and cables along the lines connecting Paris with cities such as Lille in the north, Bordeaux in the west and Strasbourg in the east. Another attack on the Paris-Marseille line was foiled.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Two security sources said the modus operandi meant initial suspicions fell on leftist militants or environmental activists, but they said there was not yet any evidence.
The Paris prosecutor's office said the probe would be overseen by its organised crime office, with the anti-terrorist sub-directorate (SDAT), a branch of the judicial police that typically monitors hard-left, extreme-right and radical environmental groups, coordinating investigations.
Prime Minister Gabriel Attal declined to speculate about the possibility of such groups being behind the sabotage.
"What we know, what we see, is that this operation was prepared, coordinated, that nerve centres were targeted, which shows a certain knowledge of the network to know where to strike," he said.
The coordinated strikes on the rail network will feed into a sense of apprehension ahead of the Olympics opening ceremony in the heart of Paris later on Friday. Operations at the Basel-Mulhouse airport on France's border with Switzerland were briefly suspended due to a bomb alert.
