A “massive” and “coordinated” sabotage against railway lines has shaken France on the morning of the day when the eyes of the whole world are fixed on this country for the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. Several fires on some of the main lines leaving Paris have left 800,000 passengers unable to travel, while the intelligence and police services have been activated to find those responsible. The motives and the perpetrators are still unknown.
The feared attack on the Olympics did not come in the form of an attack or via the Internet, but rather it struck at the heart of the transport network: the high-speed trains that connect the capital with the rest of the country. The authorities see the sabotage as “an attempt at destabilization,” in the words of the president of the Paris region, Valérie Pécresse; an act clearly intended to sow chaos and harm France and the French on a special day like this July 26. Repairs to the lines could take until the beginning of next week.
Acting Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said on social media: “Early this morning, acts of sabotage were carried out in a planned and coordinated manner on the SNCF premises.” The SNCF is the public railway company. “The consequences on the railway network,” Attal said, “are massive and serious.” He added: “Our intelligence services and our law enforcement agencies are mobilised to find and punish the perpetrators of these criminal acts.”
The sabotage was not caused by a cyber attack, he told the newspaper. The Parisian “A fire has affected the railway line,” said a spokesman for the National Agency for Information Systems Security, which is responsible for protecting the State from such attacks. SNCF President Jean-Pierre Farandou has suggested that the fires were deliberately set at railway intersections to maximise the damage. “A fire affects the railway line, and the railway line is not going to be damaged.” [así] to two destinations,” he said.
Farandou said the number of those affected had risen to 800,000, on a day when many Parisians were leaving for their holidays and other French people were heading to the capital for the Olympic Games. There are four high-speed lines affected, the so-called Paris-West, Paris-North and Paris-East. The Worldanother sabotage has been defused on the Paris-South-East line.
At Montparnasse station, where high-speed trains leave for the Atlantic coast, Bordeaux and Toulouse, thousands of people unable to travel were waiting for instructions or looking for alternatives, sitting in nearby cafés or in the street in the rain because they were sleepy. “The bad weather and now this,” laments Damien, who had a ticket for the coastal city of La Rochelle. But he has taken it philosophically: “We are not going to be like the typical French, complaining. We have to take it easy. No one has died.”

You can follow Morning Express Sports on Facebook and Xor sign up here to receive the Daily newsletter of the Paris Olympic Games.