Arson attack in France: manhunt for those who sabotage the French high-speed train

The major TGV connections in the north, east and west were all blocked and the high-speed line in the southeast would also have come to a standstill if an alert team of train drivers had not accidentally discovered a team of saboteurs in delivery vans.

Regional forces under the command of the National Police, the National Gendarmerie and the SDAT anti-terrorist unit are gathering evidence. Their best hope may be to track down the failed saboteurs who fled the scene near Vergigny, apparently leaving their incendiary devices intact.

There have been previous attacks on French railways, including one in January 2023 east of Paris.

As recently as the beginning of May 2024, another incident occurred on the high-speed line heading south, just before Aix-en-Provence.

This attack bears the most resemblance to Friday’s act of sabotage, as it reportedly took place on the day the Olympic flame arrived by ship in the southern port of Marseille. No arrests appear to have been made so far.

Although the attack failed and was reportedly carried out with improvised Molotov cocktails, French security authorities will investigate possible links to the attack.

At the beginning of the year, the Interior Minister warned of an extremely high “external” threat. It could possibly be a jihadist attack similar to the one carried out on the Moscow City Hall “Crocus” in March.

France has been the victim of a wave of deadly jihadist attacks in recent years, but none have been as bad as the sabotage on the railway network. Friday’s incidents caused suffering for hundreds of thousands of passengers, but no bloodshed.

Suspicion will inevitably also fall on Russia, a country that is in the midst of a large-scale invasion of its neighbour Ukraine and has launched a spectacular disinformation campaign against France.

A video was shared on pro-Kremlin social media accounts defaming the Paris Games, ridiculing the water quality of the Seine and attacking President Emmanuel Macron and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo.

Macron is hated in Moscow because of his outspoken support for Ukraine.

Although Russia has consistently denied interference, French officials suspect Moscow’s hand is behind a series of recent incidents aimed at destabilizing the French capital, from hands painted red at the Holocaust memorial to graffiti on buildings suggesting their balconies could collapse.

Just this week, a Russian man was arrested in Paris on suspicion of organizing “acts of destabilization, interference and espionage.” The Kremlin says media reports about the man were “quite strange,” but says it was not directly informed of the arrest.

But none of this necessarily means that Russia was involved in Friday’s coordinated attack on what caretaker Prime Minister Gabriel Attal called the “nerve centers” of France’s high-speed rail network.

Because whoever was behind the sabotage knew exactly where to cause the greatest disruption. Russia may not have such influence in rural France.

The head of the state railway SNCF, Jean-Pierre Farandou, said the saboteurs had focused on crossings where the most serious impacts would have been expected.

The arson attack in Courtalain disrupted two high-speed lines on the Atlantic link, one heading west towards Brittany and another heading southwest towards Bordeaux. The attack in the east brought high-speed lines to Metz in one direction and to Strasbourg in another to a halt.

At the beginning of the year, the SNCF had pointed to an increase in attacks on the rail network and stated that it was constantly on guard against acts of sabotage, “especially in the run-up to the Olympic and Paralympic Games”.

Although the company said it had detected all attacks on its systems, it was only able to prevent a single attack that caused major damage, and that was a stroke of luck.

“There was supposed to be a party today,” said Jean-Pierre Farandou. “It’s all ruined.”