News Agency, Paris
France’s high-speed rail service has been vandalized and set on fire. Hours before the Olympic opening ceremony, the main roads to the north, east and west leading to Paris were targeted in stages. As a result, travel to Paris was halted hours before the opening ceremony of the Olympics. Due to this, lakhs of passengers have been stranded. There has been a lot of damage to the railway tracks and due to these incidents, the repair work of the railway tracks may take a week. This will have a serious impact on rail traffic, officials said.
French Prime Minister Gabriel Atal said on social media that French intelligence agencies have been deployed to track down the perpetrators. Atal called these incidents ‘pre-planned’. However, no one was reported injured in these incidents. Some people have been seen fleeing from some places where the fire broke out. Incendiary devices have been seized from there, with the incidents disrupting several high-speed lines connecting Paris to the rest of France and neighboring countries, Transport Minister Patrice Vergriet said.
French authorities have thwarted several attempts to disrupt the Olympics. A Russian man has been arrested on suspicion of planning to disrupt the Games. Also on Friday, the French airport of Basel-Mulhouse, on the border of Germany and Switzerland, was evacuated in the morning and temporarily closed for ‘security reasons’. It is not yet clear whether the train attack was linked. Two German players on a train to Paris to attend the opening ceremony had to return to Belgium due to the closure of the railway line.
