Only hours before the opening ceremony of the Olympics, France was hit by an act of sabotage that paralysed its high-speed train network and left thousands of passengers stranded in stations. The government has not yet said who was behind the arson attacks, but investigations are under way.
What do we know about the attacks?
Saboteurs cut electricity cables in at least three key spots and set fire to crucial equipment, bringing services to a halt on high-speed train lines connecting Paris to regions to the north, east, south and west.
Jean-Pierre Farandou, head of state-owned train operator SNCF, said no quick fix was feasible, beyond repairing the cables manually, one by one. Attackers appeared to have purposefully targeted spots at junctions of multiple lines to ensure broad damage to the network, indicating a certain sophistication and knowledge.
A fourth attempted act of sabotage in the south of France was thwarted when maintenance teams startled the attackers at around 4am, prompting them to take flight in a van. Police are seeking to track them down.
The Paris organised crime division is leading the investigation. No arrests have been made, and anti-terror prosecutors have not been called in. SNCF expects travel plans for at least 800,000 people to be disrupted; normal service may not resume until Monday.
What had French authorities been preparing for ahead of the Games?
Police and intelligence services were monitoring threats that could disrupt the Games, according to officials, including Islamist militants, state actors — notably Russia — and political activists such as far-left, environmental, or far-right groups.
A massive police presence of 45,000 officers has been deployed in Paris. To protect the 10,500 athletes and 100 heads of state expected at the opening ceremony, a security perimeter on the Seine river has been locked down, an anti-drone system deployed and a no-fly zone established.
In recent weeks, police and intelligence services have been checking up on people on so-called Fichier S watch lists, who are suspected of links to Islamist militants or militant activist groups. There are 22,000 people on that watchlist, with 6,000 considered active and posing a higher risk.
Officials also ran background checks on the almost 1mn people before issuing accreditations for private security, volunteers and journalists, and rejected 5,000 of them as risky.
A western official said French police had turned down some Russian citizens’ requests for accreditations and QR codes required to move around the city.
Ahead of the Games, the official also said that 155 people have been subject to administrative orders validated by judges that require them to remain close to their homes and check in with local police multiple times a day.
“The main threat is from Islamist terror, which affects many countries and particularly France, with the risk of organised attacks piloted from abroad and homegrown solitary wolves who act alone,” said interior minister Gérald Darmanin on Tuesday. “There are other types of threats: the ultra-left or ultra-right, and protest movements.”
Could Russia have been involved?
French officials have previously warned of the high risk of Russia attempting to disrupt the Games. A large deployment of technology experts has been monitoring the threat of cyber attacks by Russian hackers on security infrastructure or hospitals.
Russian athletes are banned from competing under the country’s flag because of doping violations and Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, meaning “the Russians have 10 times more reason now to attack the Games”, a US official told the Financial Times last week.
In recent weeks, French police have also arrested several people linked to Russia who are suspected of planning sabotage or espionage. On Tuesday, a Russian national was arrested in Paris after police found evidence he may have aimed to target the Olympics. Moscow said it had no information on the individual arrested.
“We strongly suspect he planned to carry out a destabilising operation . . . those can take various forms, they can be cyber attacks that require collusion, or disinformation campaigns,” interior minister Darmanin said on Wednesday.
He said misleading videos on social media showing terror threats falsely linked to the Palestinian militant group Hamas had been traced back to pro-Russian groups.
This spring, intelligence agencies across Nato shared information about Russian intentions to step up acts of violence against European countries. One senior European intelligence official said this month that the Uefa championships in Germany and Olympic Games had been identified as particular targets.
Thanks to a Europe-wide clampdown on Russia’s European spy network, the Kremlin has turned to proxy agents, usually criminal gangs and sometimes political activists, for sabotage attempts ranging in sophistication from cyber attacks and bomb plots to inflammatory graffiti and arson.
Railways have become a target. The Czech Republic said in April that intelligence indicated Russia had made “thousands” of attempts to disrupt or plan disruption to European railways.
Are there other potential culprits?
France has a highly active political culture in which protests and militant actions are not uncommon. However, any attempt to link specific groups to Friday’s train sabotage remains speculative.
Some left-wing and environmental groups have voiced opposition to the Olympics. Protesters gathered in the Place de la République in Paris on Thursday night to denounce the environmental and social consequences of hosting the games. Protests also took place in Marseille when the Olympic flame arrived there two months ago. These actions have been largely peaceful, however.
Environmental activists have also protested over the construction of large water reservoirs used for farming. Radical ecologist group Soulèvements de la Terre, or Earth Uprisings, was a main organiser of a large protest at Sainte-Soline in central France last year, which turned violent as thousands of activists clashed with police. The group has also been involved in blockades at ports and industrial sites.
Darmanin attempted to ban the group, but courts invalidated the move.
There is some precedent in France for political activists targeting railway infrastructure. In 2008, a radical libertarian group based in the small town of Tarnac was arrested on suspicion of placing hooks on rail lines to derail trains. The legal process ended up stretching out for more than a decade and was tarnished by allegations of procedural irregularities and political interference; the case was dropped in 2018.
How has the Olympics been affected?
Ahead of the opening ceremony to be held on the Seine river on Friday night, Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo told reporters the sabotage would “not impact tonight’s ceremony, as it does not affect regional transport”.
The US and UK teams said all their athletes were already in Paris and accounted for, so they would not miss the ceremony.
The railway shutdown could impact some high-profile Olympic events, however, with early fixtures of men’s and women’s basketball set to begin on Saturday in Lille, some two and a half hours north of Paris.
Team USA told the FT that their basketball team was in Paris for the opening ceremony, but tentatively planned to take the train to Lille. The group has secured back-up transportation and buses in case they are needed, a spokesperson said.
Paris 2024 organisers cancelled a planned press conference Friday morning with International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach, but he later told reporters he had “full confidence in the French authorities”.
Much of central Paris along the Seine was completely closed to traffic as planned, with several metro stations out of operation on Friday ahead of the festivities. Police lined streets at many intersections checking the requisite paperwork for pedestrians and opening ceremony ticket holders seeking to pass through secured areas.
Cartography by Jana Tauschinski and Aditi Bhandari
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