There was no immediate claim of responsibility
Paris:
Traffic on France’s high-speed rail network should return to normal on Monday, Transport Minister Patrice Vergriete said, after sabotaged signal stations and cables caused travel chaos on Friday, the opening day of the Games. Olympics.
French railway operator SNCF reiterated that transport plans for teams competing at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games would be guaranteed.
Friday’s pre-dawn attacks on the high-speed rail network damaged infrastructure along lines linking Paris with cities including Lille in the north, Bordeaux in the west and Strasbourg in the east. Another attack on the Paris-Marseille line was foiled, the SNCF said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
Speaking to reporters at Montparnasse train station in Paris, Vergriete and SNCF chief Jean-Pierre Farandou said train services would continue to experience disruptions over the weekend as they gradually return to normal.
On Friday, 100,000 people were unable to catch trains and another 150,000 faced delays, but ended up reaching their destinations, Vergriete said.
“There will still be disruptions tomorrow,” Vergriete told reporters. “From Monday onwards, there is no need to worry.”
Farandou confirmed this, adding that investigations were ongoing and it was not yet known who was behind the attack.
The SNCF said in a statement that traffic will remain interrupted on Sunday on the North axis, but should improve on the Atlantic axis for returns on the weekend.
“On the Eastern high-speed line, traffic resumed as normal this morning at 6:30 am (05:30 GMT), while on the Northern, Brittany and South-West high-speed lines, 7 out of 10 trains on average will run with delays of 1 2 hours”, it said.
Two security sources said the modus operandi led to initial suspicions falling on left-wing militants or environmental activists, but said there was no evidence yet.
Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said on Friday it was too early to say who might be behind the sabotage.
“What we know, what we see, is that this operation was prepared, coordinated, that nerve centers were targeted, which shows a certain knowledge of the network to know where to attack,” he said.
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