Saboteurs struck France’s TGV high-speed train network in a series of pre-dawn attacks that caused chaos on the country’s busiest rail lines ahead of the Paris Olympics opening ceremony on Friday.
The coordinated sabotage took place as France rolled out an unprecedented peacetime security operation involving tens of thousands of police and soldiers to lockdown the capital for the Games, sucking in security resources from across the country.
The state-owned railway operator said vandals had damaged signal boxes 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. Hundreds of thousands of people were left stranded at rail stations. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but two security sources said initial suspicions fell on hardline leftist militants or environmental activists.
