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The Summer Olympics in Paris, France, are plunging into chaos amid a series of “coordinated malicious acts” targeting the city’s transport network. Arsonists lit fires inside pipes holding electrical cables crucial to the high-speed rail network across the European Union (EU) member state, and bomb threats shut down the Paris, Gare du Nord railway station and triggered an evacuation at the EuroAirport Basel-Mulhouse-Freiburg hub at the tri-border area between France, Germany, and Switzerland.
State-owned railway operator SNCF says arsonists targeted lines serving routes from Paris to Lille in the north, Bordeaux in the west, and Strasbourg, which borders Germany and hosts plenary sessions of the European Parliament, in the east. Eurostar says services between Paris and London, England, are also suffering, with some trains redirected or canceled and many travelers suffering extended journey times.
The disruption will impact at least a quarter of a million people today, ahead of the Olympics’ opening ceremony, and a further 800,000 people across the weekend.
“The consequences on the rail network are massive and serious,” said outgoing Prime Minister Gabriel Attal. “I am thinking of all the French people, all the families, who were getting ready to go on vacation… Our intelligence services and law enforcement are mobilized to find and punish the perpetrators of these criminal acts,” he added.
As of the time of publication, the authorities have offered no suggestions as to who could be responsible for the attacks.
The French government has implemented an unprecedented security operation in hopes of safeguarding the multicultural capital during the Olympics, deploying over 45,000 police officers, 10,000 soldiers, and 2,000 private security agents.
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The Summer Olympics in Paris, France, are plunging into chaos amid a series of “coordinated malicious acts” targeting the city’s transport network. Arsonists lit fires inside pipes holding electrical cables crucial to the high-speed rail network across the European Union (EU) member state, and bomb threats shut down the Paris, Gare du Nord railway station and triggered an evacuation at the EuroAirport Basel-Mulhouse-Freiburg hub at the tri-border area between France, Germany, and Switzerland.
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