Traffic on France’s high-speed train, the TGV, is gradually returning to normal on Saturday after signaling stations and cables were sabotaged ahead of the Olympics opening ceremony in Paris on Friday.
“The situation is expected to have been completely normalized on Monday,” said a statement from the French Ministry of Transport.
Seven out of ten TGV lines will start operating on Saturday. Several of them with delays of one or two hours, according to SNCF.
Arson attacks, which took place before dawn on Friday, first damaged the TGV network on several lines: between Paris and Lille in the north, Bordeaux in the west and Strasbourg in the east.
An attack against the line between Paris and Marseille was prevented, according to the French state railways, SNCF, according to Reuters.
No group or individual has claimed responsibility for the attacks.
According to the SNCF, the sabotage actions against the trains were ‘on a large scale’. France’s Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, calls the attacks ‘coordinated acts of sabotage’.
“Our intelligence service and police have been deployed to find those who are behind it,” he says.
The attacks affected perhaps 250,000 passengers on Friday, while around 800,000 passengers are believed to have been delayed over the weekend.
On Friday, SNCF advised passengers to postpone their journeys and avoid train stations.
The security measures during the Paris Olympics are enormous. According to the newspaper Le Monde, over 30,000 police officers and 10,000 soldiers and additional security personnel were deployed during the opening ceremony.
The president of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, says he has full confidence in the French authorities’ handling of the situation.
The French police, the country’s intelligence service and anti-terrorist authority, SDAT, are involved in the investigation of the attacks. Security sources say initial, but unsubstantiated, suspicions were directed at left-wing militants or environmental activists.
ritzau
Source: politiken.dk
