France’s high-speed rail network was hit by an act of vandalism on Friday, disrupting the travel of tens of thousands of passengers, a vicious attack that came at a time when tourists were expected to flock to the capital ahead of the opening of the Paris Olympics.
A source close to the investigation told AFP the “acts of vandalism” were deliberate and targeted, adding that many lines would be suspended. National rail company SNCF added that the attacks affected its Atlantic, Northern and Eastern lines.
“The arson attack was launched with the aim of damaging our facilities,” SNCF said, adding that traffic on the affected lines was “severely disrupted” and would remain so until the weekend while repairs were carried out.
Passengers wait for a train to depart at Montparnasse station in Paris on July 26, 2024. France’s high-speed rail network was hit by a malicious attack, disrupting the transport system just hours before the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. (Thibault Moritz/AFP via Getty)
SNCF Chief Executive Jean-Pierre Farandou said 800,000 passengers were affected, while Transport Minister Patrice Bergriete said the attack was an “outrageous criminal act” that would have “very serious consequences” for rail traffic over the weekend.
He said connections to the north, east and northwest of France would be halved.
SNCF said trains were being diverted onto alternative tracks but that it had been “forced to cancel a number of services”.
The South Eastern line was not affected as “malicious activity was thwarted.”
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SNCF urged passengers to postpone their journeys and avoid stations, AFP reported.
The attack came as Paris was under tight security ahead of the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympics, which was expected to draw 300,000 spectators and VIPs.
The parade on Friday evening will see up to 7,500 participants in a convoy of 85 boats travelling down a six-kilometer (four-mile) stretch of the Seine.
While much of the attention has been focused on cyber attacks, the physical destruction of the infrastructure upon which modern life depends remains a serious problem, and such attacks are common, if largely unnoticed.
Political attacks on infrastructure have a long history, as Breitbart News reported when a similar sabotage attack occurred in Germany in 2022, bringing the national rail network to a halt with the coordinated cutting of communications cables across the country.
Breitbart has reported on numerous instances of far-left attacks on basic infrastructure that underpins 21st-century life, and trains are not an unusual target: In 2019, a high-speed train was destroyed in Italy after an arson attack inside a substation, which was noted to have occurred around the same time as the sentencing of another left-wing extremist group convicted in connection with a bookstore bombing.
It’s a much harder job, and the chances of losing lives are much higher, but Canada has also seen far-left train derailments in recent years, with environmentalists destroying oil trains in protest against oil pipelines. In one case, a derailed oil train burst into flames, spilling 1.5 million litres of oil.
Data infrastructure such as telephone exchanges and fiber optic cables, as well as electricity supplies, are also known. 2019In France, radio stations and radio transmitters have been set on fire, and in 2020 telephone and data cables were cut, leaving 50,000 people without internet access in the greater Paris area, in the culmination of a weeks-long campaign of sabotage against information infrastructure, with the “far-left” suspected to be responsible.
2021 saw a series of apparently linked attacks on telephone and internet services in France. Several nights of sabotage saw the burning of data company work vehicles, the destruction of fiber optic cables and the destruction of telecommunications towers. In a statement, the left-wing forces claimed responsibility for these acts, saying: “This is not to protest specifically against 5G, but in a broader context, to fight the technological world… We want to pay tribute to all the arsonists who are currently operating in the shadows and repeatedly defeating this technological hell.”
Something similar has happened this year. In early April, far-left forces were suspected of destroying a power plant and nine power lines over two consecutive nights, causing power outages for thousands of homes and semiconductor factories. Just a few days later, major data cables were cut in several French cities on the same night, completely knocking out the internet. The terrorist attacks were said to have been coordinated by “people with deep knowledge of the networks.”
