A SNCF railway worker and a police officer work at the site where vandals targeted France's high-speed train network with a series of coordinated actions that brought major disruption, ahead of the Paris 2024 Olympics opening ceremony, in Croisilles, northern France July 26, 2024. REUTERS/Brian SnyderBrian Snyder/Reuters
Hours before Paris kicked off the most ambitious Olympic opening ceremony ever attempted, a series of attacks targeting the country’s high-speed train network caused havoc for hundreds of thousands of commuters, and a bomb threat briefly closed a major airport.
The Paris public prosecutor’s office announced that an investigation had been launched through the national organized crime agency.
Rail company SNCF said in a statement that “co-ordinated acts of malice” affected several train lines. The Eurostar service between London and Paris was also hit by cancellations and delays. All the incidents occurred at several installations outside Paris, affecting rail service from the north, east and west of the country.
“It’s the major departures that are under attack, through the SNCF. It’s a part of France that’s under attack and it’s the French that are under attack,” SNCF chief executive Jean-Pierre Farandou told France’s BFMTV. Mr. Farandou said thousands of rail workers would be dispatched to repair the lines, but it could be several days before full service is restored.
He said the perpetrators had set fire to the trenches that contain fibre optic cables that transmit safety information to drivers. Rail workers had also managed to stop another attempt to vandalize cables early Friday morning at Vergigny in north central France, Mr. Farandou said.
“What we know, what we can see, is that this operation was prepared, co-ordinated, that key points were targeted, which shows a kind of knowledge of the network to know where to strike,” said Prime Minister Gabriel Attal.
France’s National Agency for Information Systems Security said the rail system had not come under cyberattack.
Transport minister Patrice Vergriete also said the attacks appeared to be arson. “All the elements we have clearly show that it was deliberate: the co-ordination of the times, the vans found with people fleeing, particularly on the southeastern section, the incendiary devices found on site. Everything points to arson,” he told a news conference.
The Bâle-Mulhouse airport on the French-Swiss border was also evacuated Friday morning for several hours because of a bomb threat. “The airport has reopened, and flight operations are gradually restarting,” officials said in a statement in the early afternoon. Known as the EuroAirport, it is managed by French and Swiss authorities and handles around eight million passengers last year.
The disruption came just hours before the opening ceremony was set to begin along the Seine River in central Paris.
It is the first time the ceremony has been held outside a stadium, with more than 200,000 spectators lining the riverbank. The four-hour event, which started at 7:30 p.m. local time, included a flotilla of 94 barges carrying around 7,000 athletes from the Austerlitz Bridge to Trocadéro across from the Eiffel Tower.
The Canadian team was on a barge with teams from Chile, Cameroon, and China. Canada has sent 338 athletes to the Games but only around 100 were on the barge along with an equal number of coaches and staff.
High-speed trains around France were hit by several “malicious acts,” heavily disrupting traffic on the day of the high-risk opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics.
The Associated Press
Olympic organizers have been concerned for months about possible terrorist attacks during the Games and around 45,000 police officers, as well as 10,000 soldiers and security personnel were stationed in the city for the opening ceremony. Along with 10,500 athletes, some 100 world leaders are expected to attend various events throughout the Games.
Friday’s train disruptions were not a coincidence, said Valérie Pécresse, the head of the Paris regional council. “This attack is an attempt to destabilize France at a time when the Olympic and Para Olympic Games are about to be launched,” Ms. Pécresse said on X.
In Paris, all bridges were closed off Friday to both vehicles and pedestrians as a vast anti-terrorism perimeter along the banks of the river sealed off a kilometres-long area to those without tickets for the ceremony. The skies during the ceremony were a no-fly zone for 150 kilometres around.
France has been on high alert in the past few weeks, as preparations to host the Olympics hit the final stretch.
Earlier this week, Paris prosecutors said they had arrested a 40-year-old Russian man at his Paris apartment on suspicion of planning to “destabilize the Olympic Games.”
About one million background checks have scrutinized Olympic volunteers, workers and others involved in the Games as well as those applying for passes to enter the most tightly controlled security zone in Paris – along the banks of the Seine – ahead of the opening ceremony.
Interior minister Gerald Darmanin said the checks blocked about 5,000 people from attending – about 1,000 of them suspected of possibly meddling for a foreign power.
French historian Patrick Boucheron, who co-authored the opening ceremony, acknowledged that holding the event on the river “was a major risk,” but added: “it’s too beautiful an opportunity to pass up.”
Mr. Boucheron said organizers had been at pains not to be boastful but to present Paris as a city that has had to struggle for its freedom and values. “The main message is that in spite of everything, we can live together,” he said.
With a report from Rachel Brady and the Associated Press