The Paris Olympics, President Macron’s dream of greatness, could not have begun any worse. An attack on the lines, with fires and explosionsacts of vandalism apparently accompanied by a hacker attack on the SNCF computer system, blocked the high-speed train network that was supposed to bring thousands of tourists and spectators to Paris for the world’s most important sporting event.
The attack which is taking shape more and more every hour as a real large-scale sabotageprobably unprecedented in the history of railways and not only French ones, has not coincidentally been defined by the French Minister of Transport Patrice Vergriete as a “criminal act”. And equally not coincidentally it strikes France in the heart of its dream of grandeur represented precisely by the trains at high speedpioneers of high-speed rail in Europe.
According to initial information that is constantly updated, a very high number of trains that should have arrived in Paris have been diverted to secondary stations, others have abandoned the high-speed line and are travelling with delays of almost two hours on normal lines. This is the case of the Lille-Paris line, but also of the trains coming from London which, before the others, also for security reasons, were diverted to the old lines. And police sources – according to Le Figaro – have underlined how the sabotage recalls the methods used by the extreme left.
A press release has appeared on the website of the French railways SNCF inviting passengers to postpone or give up their trip especially to Parisalthough – according to initial information – the Atlantic, Nord and Est lines of the TGV would have suffered the consequences of the “malicious attack” in particular.
Affected directly or indirectly by the sabotage would be approximately 800 thousand passengers or stuck on lines or in hyper-congested stations, where the security risk and the danger of attacks are obviously dilated compared to the already complex ordinary administration that the French police forces were preparing to face.
Sncf talks about a sabotage which affected three out of four lines and interruptions which affected the high-speed trains, clearly the result of acts of “sabotage” coordinated. According to the website of the newspaper Le Figaro, the technique used is typical of the far-left terrorism. And if this lead, indirectly confirmed by security sources, were to prove to be well-founded, the consequences on the delicate French political balance could be devastating.
It is worth remembering that in the last few hours the Israeli secret services had warned their French colleagues of the risk of coordinated attacks and of a specific target also on the Israeli Olympic delegation.
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