Paris Olympics: arson attacks bring chaos to French rail network before opening ceremony | BBC News
280,316
Published 2024-07-26
The saboteurs struck away from the capital at five apparently unguarded places. France's state-owned rail company SNCF says the saboteurs vandalised or targeted five signal boxes and electricity installations.
France's TGV high-speed train services ground to a halt on major lines and stranded passengers filled the main concourses at Gare Du Nord and Gare Montparnasse, two of the major rail hubs in Paris for travellers on the main lines running north and west of the capital.
The 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". It was not immediately clear who was behind the attacks.
The sabotage took place despite a massive security operation to protect the Olympics. Streets in the centre of Paris have been blocked off, metro stations closed and thousands of police, soldiers and other guards deployed to maintain security on the big showpiece day launch the Olympic Games.
Reeta Chakrabarti presents BBC News at Ten reporting by Andrew Harding and Gordon Corera.
Subscribe here: bit.ly/1rbfUog
For more news, analysis and features visit: www.bbc.com/news
#BBCNews
All Comments (21)
-
I'm shocked the BBC said violent islamists
-
Opening ceremony was by itself chaotic .
-
The opening ceremony was painfully long - it really did drag on!
-
Oh no! Not "delibarate sabotage"! That's the worst kind of sabotage!
-
Who did that, that’s not nice, leave the railway alone
-
I think it was last year when some of the high speed train network in Germany was disrupted by tampering of cables. If I remember correctly it happened in two different states at the same time, which is why there was no backup available. They figured it had been an inside job too, because the locations weren't common knowledge and they targeted the main and the backup.
-
If only there was a word derived from French to explain what has happened!
-
seen this coming a country mile away
-
Cultural enrichment incoming
-
Just 2 minutes and they blame Russia.
-
Definitely not terrorists …… YAWN
-
Opening ceremony is boring af
-
Sabotage and not terrorism depending on the ethnicity of the perpetrator smh
-
Cancel your tv licence today
-
How could the authorities not have anticipated something like this? Are the security agencies and forces living in the 1950s? Transportation, communications, water and food supplies……basic.
-
Why are countries still bankrupting themselves for this "magnificent spectacle"?
-
Its Modern Warfare 3 all over again.
-
I can't believe anyone went to these Olympics.
-
Oh what a surprise, not?
-
Very impressed that the French enginees managed to start work on the problem in hours. Can't imagine this happening in GB..Still on mechanical semaphore signals where I live, far from fibre optics
