PARIS (Reuters) – Traffic on France’s high-speed rail network should be back to normal by Monday, Transport Minister Patrice Vergriete said after sabotaged signal stations and cables caused travel chaos on Friday, the opening day of the Olympic Games.
French rail operator SNCF reiterated that transport plans for teams competing in the Paris 2024 Olympics would be guaranteed.
Friday’s pre-dawn attacks on the high-speed rail network damaged infrastructure along the lines connecting Paris with cities such as Lille in the north, Bordeaux in the west and Strasbourg in the east. Another attack on the Paris-Marseille line was foiled, SNCF has said.
There has been no immediate claim of responsibility.
Speaking to reporters at Paris’ Montparnasse train station, Vergriete and SNCF chief Jean-Pierre Farandou said train services would continue to experience disruption throughout the weekend as they gradually return to normal.
On Friday, 100,000 people could not take their trains, and another 150,000 faced delays but eventually got to their destinations, Vergriete said.
“There will still be disruptions tomorrow,” Vergriete told reporters. “From Monday, there is no need to worry.”
Farandou confirmed this, adding that investigations were ongoing and they did not yet know who was behind the attack.
SNCF said in a statement that traffic would remain disrupted on Sunday on the North axis but should improve on the Atlantic axis for weekend returns.
“On the Eastern high-speed line, traffic resumed normally this morning at 6:30 a.m. (0530 GMT) while on the North, Brittany and South-West high-speed lines, 7 out of 10 trains on average will run with delays of 1 to 2 hours,” it said.
Two security sources have said the modus operandi meant initial suspicions fell on leftist militants or environmental activists, but they said there was not yet any evidence.
Prime Minister Gabriel Attal on Friday said it was too early to say who could be behind the sabotage.
“What we know, what we see, is that this operation was prepared, coordinated, that nerve centres were targeted, which shows a certain knowledge of the network to know where to strike,” he said.
(Reporting by Dominique Vidalon and Leigh Thomas, writing by Ingrid Melander, editing by Frances Kerry and Clelia Oziel)
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