Three days after attacks on the nation’s rail infrastructure caused train delays, authorities reported today that fiber-optic cables had been “sabotaged” in a number of French regions, reports RTE.
The hundreds of thousands of individuals whose travel plans were delayed on Friday due to the rail network outage coincided with Paris’s celebration of the start of the Olympic Games.
Authorities said that throughout the course of yesterday and today, multiple telecom providers’ cables were compromised in six different regions of France; nonetheless, Paris remained unaffected.
Major carriers Free and SFR acknowledged to AFP that they had been impacted, despite the fact that no significant interruptions had been observed as of yet, reports RTE.
“It’s vandalism,” stated Nicolas Chatin, a spokesman for SFR, the largest of France’s four carriers.
“Large cable segments were severed. You would need to use a grinder or an axe,” he stated.
According to a person familiar with the situation, no one has yet claimed responsibility for the telecom sabotage.
Whether police are connecting the two sets of sabotage attacks is still unknown, reports RTE.
Though nothing has been proved, a number of MPs have made suggestions that “ultra-left” radicals may be responsible for Friday’s attacks on the rail system.
Three days after the planned acts of sabotage severely hampered travel before to the Olympic opening ceremony, the rail network has resumed operations, according to Transport Minister Patrice Vergriete, reports RTE.
Travel arrangements for thousands of passengers were upended on Friday morning after a series of pre-dawn strikes throughout France targeted the TGV high-speed rail network.
Vandals had harmed signal substations and cables along the lines that connected Paris to places like Lille in the north, Bordeaux in the west, and Strasbourg in the east, according to train operator SNCF.
The Paris-Marseille line was protected from another attack.
After the attacks, SNCF claimed that security will be strengthened.
The identities of those responsible for the three arson assaults on key locations within the rail network early on Friday are still unknown, as is the possibility that their timing was planned to interfere with the opening ceremony of the Games later that day, reports RTE.
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