Arson attack on French rail network brings travel chaos ahead of Olympic opening ceremony (2024)

PARIS — Hours before the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics on Friday, part of France’s high-speed rail network was paralyzed by a “massive attack” that disrupted service for hundreds of thousands of passengers, officials said.

Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said the country’s intelligence services and law enforcement agencies had been mobilized to track down suspects as he warned in a post on X that “the consequences for the rail network are massive and serious.”

France’s national rail network SNFC said in a news release that a series of “coordinated” arson attacks had damaged a number of its facilities and services, while another “malicious act was foiled” on the LGV Sud-Est line connecting Paris and Lyon.

Calling the incident a “massive attack,” it said in an update that at least 250,000 passengers would be impacted Friday, with 800,000 expected to be affected over the weekend. A sweeping number of services had to be canceled, it said, warning passengers affected to postpone their travel plans and “not to go to the station.”

Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin told reporters Friday afternoon that there are no threats against the opening ceremony, adding that the attack on rail services has had no direct impact on the Olympics other than inconveniencing people arriving or leaving by train. Darmanin described the sabotage as coordinated attacks against the French people rather than against the Olympic Games.

An unprecedented security operation has been put in place for the opening ceremony, including about 45,000 police officers across Paris and 10,000 military personnel in the Île-de-France region, the latter of which is the biggest deployment in the country since World War II and the biggest ever in peacetime.

On theRiver Seine, SWAT officers will travel on boats with the athletes, navy divers will inspect the hulls of vessels for explosives and sonar will be used to detect underwater intruders, with nets at locations on the river that act as entry barriers. The banks and bridges of the river are on lockdown and buildings and basem*nts along the ceremony route have been searched.

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SNCF Chairman and CEO Jean-Pierre Farandou told reporters that fiber optic cables in at least three locations had been set on fire. The cables were connected to signal boxes and other rail infrastructure, he said.

Preliminary information from French law enforcement and intelligence organizations indicates that anarchists or extreme leftist groups are likely responsible for the coordinated sabotage attack on the French high-speed rail network, two senior law enforcement and intelligence officials in the U.S. briefed on the matter said.

The officials stressed the investigation is ongoing and the initial assessment is preliminary.

The attacks appeared to have been coordinated with the intention of causing massive disruption to the country’s rail network, he added.

Paris’ public prosecutor’s office said in a news release that an investigation had been opened involving charges including damage to property likely to harm the fundamental interest of the nation, which can carry a sentence of up to 15 years’ imprisonment and a fine of 225,000 euros, or around $244,200.

French Transport Minister Patrice Vergriete also took to X, where he said “coordinated malicious acts” targeted several lines and would “seriously disrupt traffic until this weekend.”

In comments aired by the French broadcaster BFMTV, Vergriete later said the disruptions appeared to unfold simultaneously and appeared intentional. It was unclear who might be responsible.

One passenger, Maëliss Davy, 23, said she had planned to travel from Paris to Nantes, a city in the Upper Brittany region of western France, for a friend's birthday Saturday, but was surprised to receive a message on the SNCF app saying her train had been delayed due to an "act of vandalism."

Her train was later canceled altogether, she said, speaking with NBC News over X. “Fortunately I’ve managed to book a train tomorrow morning at a station on the outskirts of Paris,” Davy said. However, she added the train station, Gare Montparnasse, was full of confused, tired “and quite impatient” passengers whose travel plans had also been affected.

In Lille, passengers were scrambling to make it to Paris in time for the opening ceremony, Reuters reported.

Tomomi Guillochon, from London, received the same message as Davy and attempted to rebook a train.

"We tried to rebook but now it’s delayed for another hour and twenty minutes," Guillochon told the outlet.

There was widespread confusion at Gare Montparnasse, with a busy crowd of passengers appearing calm, but eager for updates and answers about their delayed journeys.

Meanwhile, at Gare du Nord, trains appeared to be back up and running normally at the travel hub by early Friday afternoon. SNFC trains were seen coming and going through the station, with arrival and departures listed as “on time" on travel monitors.

The Olympic opening ceremony is set for 7:30 p.m. local timehere in the French capital.

SNCF said all tickets would be exchangeable and refundable and that passengers would be informed of updates via text.

Elsewhere, the Basel Mulhouse Freiburg Airport in eastern France was briefly evacuated because of a bomb scare. Police said that flights resumed shortly afterward.

Separately, Eurostar said in a statement on its website that all high speed trains between Paris and the northwestern city of Lille were being diverted from the high seed line to the slower, classic line.

It said it had mobilized teams stations, call centers, and onboard trains to assist passengers and provide them with updates.

The arrests come amid a recent uptick in terrorism and violent incidents outside of any Olympic games related concerns.

A 40-year-old Russian man was indicted Tuesday by investigators who believed he intended to “organize events likely to cause destabilization during the Olympic Games,” the Paris prosecutor’s office told NBC News.

Authorities were also probing electronic devices of an 18-year-old after he was arrested as part of separate investigation involving a terrorist organization French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said in an interview with BFMTV on Tuesday.

A man was also arrested last week on terrorism charges after he was accused of attacking a taxi driver in the Loire region, which came a day after a police officer was wounded in a knife attack in Paris.

Nancy Ing reported from Paris and Chantal Da Silva from London