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Sabotage on the tracks endangers big day for Paris

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video subtitles, The mood in Paris’ Gare du Nord as the crowds grow

  • Author, Paul Kirby
  • Role, BBC News

Streets in central Paris were cordoned off, subway stations were closed and thousands of police, soldiers and other security forces were deployed to ensure security on the big opening day of the Olympic Games.

But the saboteurs struck outside the capital at five apparently unguarded locations.

The French state railway company SNCF said the saboteurs had vandalised or attempted to vandalise five signal boxes and electrical installations between 1:00 a.m. and 5:30 a.m. on Friday.

One such site was in Courtalain, east of Le Mans and 150 km southwest of Paris. A picture of burnt-out cables in a shallow ravine, with the protective SNCF paving stones missing from them, was posted on the local municipality’s social media page.

The SNCF spoke of a “massive, large-scale attack aimed at paralyzing its services.” Arson and theft of cables occurred not only in Courtalain, but also in Pagny-sur-Moselle, a village outside the eastern French cities of Metz and Croisilles, not far from the northern French city of Arras.

Small locations, but at major hubs of the TGV high-speed network.

Another attempted attack at another TGV junction in the southeast of Paris near Vergigny was thwarted by SNCF workers who happened to be carrying out maintenance work on site on Friday morning.

The act of sabotage was clearly coordinated and had immediate consequences – and it came on one of the busiest days imaginable for France’s highly respected railway network.

SNCF boss Jean-Pierre Farandou spoke of a “deliberate, calculated and coordinated” attack that required extensive repair work.

Image source, Courtesy of the municipality of Vald’Yerre

Image description, In Courtalain, east of Le Mans, the damage to the cables was clearly visible.

Friday, July 26, was the beginning of the great finish (big excursion) for many French holidaymakers leaving the cities. It was also the day of the opening ceremony that the organizers of the Paris Olympic Games had been working towards for years.

Hundreds of stranded passengers filled the main halls of the Gare du Nord and Gare Montparnasse, two of Paris’ major railway hubs for travelers on routes to the north and west of the capital.

Passengers at Gare du Nord waited patiently for news about delayed trains, not only within France but also to London, Brussels and Amsterdam.

The much-vaunted TGV high-speed network to and from Paris – to Lille in the north, Le Mans in the west and Strasbourg in the east – had failed.

At the nearby Gare de L’Est, which serves the east, an SNCF representative said the company had diverted high-speed TGV trains to other, slower routes, which would cause long delays and disruptions but would keep the network moving.

From the afternoon onwards, train traffic slowly resumed in all three directions, but with limited service, delays of up to two hours and still some cancellations.

“Everything indicates that these fires were deliberately set,” said Transport Minister Patrice Vergriete. “The timing (of the attacks), the vans that were recovered after the people fled, the incendiary devices that were found at the crime scene.”

These were clearly acts of sabotage, and the timing was apparently chosen to cause serious disruption on the day when Paris wanted to show the world its best side.

Image source, (David Ramos/Getty Images)

Image description, The disruption caused chaos at some of Paris’ major traffic hubs

Acting Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said the impact on the rail network was massive and serious, and French intelligence and law enforcement agencies were deployed to “find and punish those behind these criminal acts.”

The French authorities have been on alert for months about possible acts of sabotage in connection with the Games.

In the spring, they warned that several groups had attempted to disrupt Olympic events, including the torch relay that took place across France in the run-up to the opening ceremony.

As has now become known, on the day the Olympic flame arrived in France’s largest southern port on May 8, incendiary devices were found on the high-speed TGV line between Aix-en-Provence and Marseille.

According to French television, several bottles filled with a yellow liquid were found four kilometers outside Aix.

Image source, REUTERS/Brian Snyder

Image description, SNCF employees hope to complete the repair work over the weekend

But who would want to thwart the plans of hundreds of thousands of French travellers and disrupt the start of the Olympic Games?

A security source told the French media that the arson attacks bore all the hallmarks of the extreme left.

However, Mr Attal did not want to speculate about who might be behind the sabotage.

He urged the public to be cautious as the investigation had only just begun. However, he also said that the saboteurs had targeted “nerve centers” of the high-speed network and therefore knew where the network was vulnerable.

In recent weeks, Russia has been linked to at least two suspected attacks in France.

Last month, a Russian-Ukrainian citizen was arrested in a hotel near Charles de Gaulle airport on suspicion of involvement in a Russian sabotage campaign.

Just this week, a Russian was arrested. He is accused of being involved in a plot to “destabilize” the games.

Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said he was suspected of wanting to organize “operations of destabilization, interference and espionage” on behalf of the Russian secret service FSB.

So far, French authorities have not established any connection between Russia and Friday’s attacks.

Mr Darmanin said this month that 3,570 people had been barred from the Games, including people seen as a security risk and “dozens of radical individuals close to Islamist, ultra-left and ultra-right circles”.

Nearly a million people, from athletes and coaches to Olympic volunteers, have undergone security checks ahead of the Paris Games.

However, preventing acts of sabotage at unguarded sites in rural areas is a completely different challenge.

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