The French rail system regularly is attacked, experts said, but not at the scale and coordination level at which it was struck by saboteurs on Friday—hours before the Olympics officially began in Paris. "Critical points were targeted, which shows that they knew enough about the network to know where to strike," Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said. Fires were set just before two-way splits in the high-speed system's tracks, the New York Times reports, so that both branches would be affected. "The locations were particularly chosen to have more serious consequences," Jean-Pierre Farandou, the president of the national rail company said.
Three of the four high-speed routes leading from Paris were affected, per the BBC. The SNCF system has about 17,400 miles of track, much of it in rural areas, used by 15,000 trains daily. That's too big to guard around the clock, analysts said. A consultant said that the signal stations and cables targeted are often guarded by alarms, cameras, fencing, and barbed wire. "Railway networks are particularly open," Arnaud Aymé said. They can be damaged by a fallen tree, a lightning strike on an electrical substation, or a malicious act, he said.
No injuries were reported. A lawmaker said the attacks apparently were carried out as "a political action against the government and to damage the image of the country." The prosecutors beginning their criminal investigation said it's too early to know a motive, though they said they don't doubt that the fires were set, per the Times. Disrupting Paris' commuter lines would have more directly damaged the Olympics, experts said. As it is, the lawmaker reported that people are "mostly really bothered and annoyed" at the interruption to their travel. (More 2024 Paris Olympics stories.)
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