A far-left activist has been arrested in connection with a series of attacks on the country’s high-speed train network which caused travel chaos ahead of the Paris Olympics opening ceremony.
France’s interior minister confirmed media reports of an arrest being made on Sunday in Seine-Maritime, Normandy.
It comes as French reports said telecom installations belonging to companies SFR and Bouygues Telecom have been vandalised, affecting mainly fixed-line services.
The reports in Le Parisien newspaper and BFM TV said cables in electrical cabinets had been cut in southern France, and that installations in the Meuse region near Luxembourg and the Oise area near Paris had been targeted.
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Paris: ‘Probably a large-scale sabotage’
Railway attack
It was not immediately clear if the telecoms vandalism was connected to the railway attack which marred the start of the Olympics in Paris on Friday.
Vandals used explosive devices to set off fires which damaged signal boxes along lines connecting the capital with cities such as Lille in the north, Bordeaux in the west and Strasbourg in the east, state-owned railway operator SNCF said.
Another attack on the Paris-Marseille line was foiled.
Hundreds of thousands of people were left stranded at stations after the overnight attacks on the TGV network which authorities called coordinated sabotage.
Eurostar’s high-speed services linking London and Paris were forced to switch to slower lines while Germany’s national railway company Deutsche Bahn warned of disruption to long-distance services.
Traffic only returned to normal Monday morning, but only after some 800,000 customers had faced disruption.
The opening ceremony was held at landmarks across Paris, including the Eiffel Tower. Pic AP
Opening ceremony held under heavy security
More than 300,000 spectators lined the banks of the River Seine for Friday evening’s opening ceremony when the athletes parade through the heart of Paris on a flotilla of barges and riverboats.
France deployed 45,000 police, 10,000 soldiers and 2,000 private security agents to secure the celebratory event.
Snipers were on rooftops and drones kept watch from the air.
But while the capital was locked down for the opening ceremony, security elsewhere in the country has been lighter.
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