Paris Olympics: French railway operator provides update after saboteurs damaged rail lines
Passengers wait for their train departures on the platform at the Bordeaux-Saint-Jean train station
Over two days after saboteurs disrupted the French high-speed rail network, the authorities said they had finally repaired the damage. France's national rail operator, SNCF made the announcement on Sunday (Jul 28) as the second day of the Olympics got underway.
SNCF said traffic on the main line was already "practically normal"and "three out of four" high-speed TGV trains were running on the main line north from the capital.
"Thanks to the exceptional efforts of SNCF Network staff, who worked non-stop since Friday morning, repairs are now fully completed on all the high-speed rail services affected by the sabotage attacks," the operator said.
"Tests have been conclusive and the train lines are now able to function as normal.There will be no more disruption from Monday morning onwards," it added.
What happened?
The incident took place on Friday (Jul 26), hours before the start of the Opening ceremony that crippled the entire rail network across the country.
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.
No organisation orindividual has claimed responsibility for the attacks so far but given the sheer scale and accuracy, it cannot be ruled out that it was a coordinated sabotage attempt.
The French government is zeroing in on certain leftist as well as environmentalist organisations for the attack but so far, they do not have any evidence to back the claims. Foreign involvement in the attack has not been ruled out either.
"Who is responsible? Either it's from within, or it's been ordered from abroad, it's too early to say," said Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin.
"We have uncovered a certain number of elements which lead us to believe that we will know fairly quickly who is responsible."
Around 800,000 passengers were affected by the disruption on a day when France was preparing to show the world its hosting prowess. Additionally,two of the four trains carrying athletes were affected by the outage as well.
(With inputs from agencies)