Rural Sabotage Disrupts Paris Olympics Opening
Saboteurs have struck away from the capital of Paris, at five apparently unguarded places despite the block off of metro stations and the deployment of thousands of police, soldiers and other guards to maintain security on the big showpiece day of the Olympics.
France's state-owned rail company SNCF says the saboteurs either vandalised or tried to vandalise five signal boxes and electricity installations between 01:00 and 05:30, today.
One site was at Courtalain, east of Le Mans and 150km to the south-west of Paris. The local community's social media page posted a picture of burnt-out cables in a shallow gulley, with its protective SNCF paving stones discarded.
Friday, 26 July marks the start of the grand départ, the big getaway for many French holiday makers leaving the cities. It is also the day of the highly anticipated opening ceremony that Paris Olympics organizers have spent years preparing.
Hundreds of stranded passengers filled the main concourses at Gare du Nord and Gare Montparnasse, two major rail hubs in Paris for travelers heading north and west of the capital.
Passengers at Gare du Nord waited patiently for updates on delayed trains, affecting routes not only within France but also to London, Brussels, and Amsterdam.
The highly regarded high-speed TGV network, serving routes north to Lille, west to Le Mans, and east towards Strasbourg, was down. At nearby Gare de L'Est, which serves the east, an SNCF official said plans were underway to divert high-speed TGV trains onto other, slower lines, resulting in long delays and disruptions but keeping the network operational.
"Everything points us to these fires being deliberate," said Transport Minister Patrice Vergriete. "The timing [of the attacks], the vans that have been recovered after people have fled, the incendiary agents found on the scene."
Clearly acts of sabotage, and evidently timed to cause severe disruption on the day that Paris is trying to show its best face to the world.
Caretaker Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said the repercussions for the rail network were massive and serious, and France's intelligence services and forces of order had been deployed to "find and punish those behind these criminal acts".
The big question is who would want to ruin the plans of hundreds of thousands of French travellers and disrupt the start of the Olympic Games?
Earlier this week, a Russian man was arrested for alledged involvement in a "destabilisation" plot targeting the Games.
Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said he was suspected of aiming to "organise operations of destabilisation, interference, spying" on behalf of Russia's FSB intelligence service.
So far no Russian link has been made by French authorities to the sabotage on the rail networks.
While almost a million people, ranging from athletes and coaches to Olympic volunteers, have gone through a security check ahead of the Games in Paris, preventing acts of sabotage at unguarded sites in rural areas seems like a different ball game entirely.
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