Paris Olympics: French railway operator declares 'no safety issue', hours after sabotage on rail lines

French rail company SNCF said there was no safety issue in operating the trains after saboteurs disrupted the high-speed rail network early on Friday (Jul 26) - hours before the beginningof the Paris Olympics opening ceremony.

SNCF Director of Atlantic, Franck Dubourdieu said although the routes were safe, the trains were delayed and running at lower frequency.

"The fact is just that because of this issue, we we are not able to run the full schedule. And, and now we have one train over three able to operate on the Atlantic Coast. All the trains are operating normally, but with roughly a oneto two-hour delay in the east of France. And for the north of France some trains were cancelled, but roughly the other trains are operating with a one-hour delay,"Dubourdieu was quoted as saying by Reuters.

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"Today what we can see is that there is no safety issue for operating trains and anyway, we will not operate one train if there is one risk. So that's our main concern to make sure that we travel safely on the French network."

Notably, around 800,000 passengers have been affected by the disruption on a day when France was preparing to show the world its hosting prowess.

Watch | Paris Olympics: WION Sports Editor's first-hand account of tight security after rail sabotage

Attackers unknown

No organisation orindividual has claimed responsibility for the attacks but given the sheer scale and accuracy, it cannot be ruled out that it was a coordinated programme.

Reports suggestthat the French government was zeroing in on certain leftist as well as environmentalist organisations for the attack but so far, they did not have any evidence to back the claims.

"There is an investigation ongoing with the French authorities. All what we know is just that it was definitely targeted on SNCF and on the high-speed train network. The fact is that it wasn't; at this point I cannot say that it was dangerous, but it was really impactful," saidDubourdieu.

According to reports, the cables which are there to ensure the security of train drivers - were set on fire and taken apart by the disruptors.

As for the athletes, two of the four trains carrying them were affected by the outage.SNCF informed that one train was cancelled while authorities were hoping that the other would become operational.

(With inputs from agencies)