The coordinated assaults have been staged at 4am native time (0200 GMT).
At every web site, the perpetrators focused fibre optic cables that carry security data for drivers and management rail modifications, SNCF chief govt Jean-Pierre Farandou mentioned.
Gerard Due, mayor of Croisilles in northern France, one of many websites hit, mentioned the attackers had specialised tools to entry the cables after which “threw a flammable liquid” on them.
Vergriete mentioned that the saboteurs had been noticed with “vans”, whereas “incendiary units have been discovered on the scene”.
Paris prosecutors opened an investigation into assaults on “the basic pursuits of the nation” and prison conspiracy.
An analogous sabotage assault was staged in Germany final yr and in jap France in January 2023.
The assaults left passengers stranded in stations throughout Paris and in lots of cities in jap, western and northern France.
Some at Montparnasse station in Paris have been left in tears.
Charles Fazio, a 70-year-old American from Florida, went to the station to attempt to get data. “I do not perceive something,” he mentioned. “We’ve to go to Lille tomorrow for the Olympics”.
French safety forces are on their highest alert to stop assaults in the course of the Paris Olympics.
Employees finishing up upkeep at Vergigny, southeast of Paris, stopped one tried assault there.
French officers refused to touch upon the id of the saboteurs.
Far-left French anarchists have a historical past of focusing on the prepare community with arson assaults. The arson methodology used resembled previous assaults by extreme-left activists, a safety supply instructed AFP.
President Emmanuel Macron has mentioned prior to now that Russia was planning to focus on the Video games. Police arrested a Russian man this week in Paris who was suspected of “organising occasions more likely to result in destabilisation in the course of the Olympic Video games”.
