“All the trains” on the French high-speed rail network are running “normally” on Monday morning, three days after sabotage attacks occurred on the day of the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics, according to the French Minister Delegate for Transport, Patrice Vergriete.
“I can confirm that this [Monday] morning, all the trains are running, both on the east line—which had already been the case since Saturday—on the Atlantic line, where yesterday [Sunday] we were nearly back to normal, and on the north line, where yesterday we were running three trains out of four, everything is running normally today,” said the minister confirmed to RTL.
The state-owned national rail company announced yesterday that all repairs to the damaged infrastructure had been “totally completed” and that there will not be “any further interruptions” from Monday onwards.
Early Friday morning, at around 4am, fibre optic cables running near the tracks that transmit safety information for drivers (red lights, switches, etc.) were cut and set on fire at various strategic signal boxes in Courtalain (LGV Atlantique), Croisilles (LGV Nord), and Pagny-Sur-Moselle (LGV Est).
These acts of sabotage caused huge disruptions for French train stations and travellers during the peak of the holiday season with people either leaving or returning from their summer holidays -- just a few hours before the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Paris on the River Seine.
French Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin confirmed on Monday that authorities have “identified a number of suspects that could have been responsible” for the attacks.
Speaking to France 2, the Minister insisted that these “attacks were voluntary, very precise and extremely well calculated.”
“These types of methods are usually used by the far-left,” he continued. When asked whether the identified profiles were associated with the far-left, he responded: “We have to be careful (...) the question here is whether they were manipulated into doing this or whether they acted on their own behalf. They could be associated with [the] far-left.”
