French trains return to regular schedule after Friday’s arson attacks

Early morning on Friday, ahead of the opening of the Olympic Games in Paris, coordinated attacks took place on France’s rail network, severely disrupting traffic and blocking sports fans, tourists and commuters from reaching their intended destinations.

The culprits are yet unknown, but the attacks took place on 3 main lines to and from the capital, with a fourth attack stopped by maintenance workers. Targeting the high-speed TGV lines, the saboteurs took apart and set fire to safety cables along the tracks on the Atlantique, Est and Nord lines, which run from Paris to Bordeaux, Strasbourg and Lille respectively, with the latter also supporting Eurostar trains to London and Brussels.

Around 800,000 people were affected by the delays and cancellations on Friday and Saturday, national rail operator SNCF said. A failsafe plan designed for the Olympics prevented even more chaos, as some passengers were able to take alternative, albeit slower services, but were at least able to reach their destinations. “France is disrupted but not paralyzed”, Axel Persson, a leader of the CGT rail union, said on Friday.

After further disruptions throughout the weekend, reparations have been completed and trains are expected to run normally from today. Yesterday, afternoon, SNCB confirmed almost all lines had returned to normal traffic, with just 3 out of 4 high-speed trains running on the North line, however, with no delays. As of today, SNCF expects no further disruptions on any lines.

“Thanks to the exceptional mobilisation of the SNCF network agents who have worked tirelessly since Friday morning, the repair work is now completely completed on all the high-speed lines affected by the acts of sabotage”, the operator said in a statement on Sunday.

Although the people behind the attacks have not been identified yet, Persson told CNN on Friday that the attackers had “extensive knowledge” of the network and could not have coordinated the attacks so specifically without access to “precise information”. According to him, a railway employee or even a construction worker from the crew that built the tracks could have been involved.

As for wider accountability, several far-left groups have claimed responsibility in letters to various media outlets, but authorities have not yet confirmed whether the claims, or which one among them, is plausible. A Russian sabotage of the opening ceremony is also among the possibilities, as police in Paris arrested a Russian man last week on suspicion of “organizing events likely to lead to destabilization during the Olympic Games”.

The investigation remains ongoing at the time of writing, but Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin told broadcaster France 2 on Saturday that a “number of findings” had raised confidence that authorities would “know fairly quickly who is responsible.”