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French rail traffic to go back to typical Monday, minister states after sabotage

Traffic on France's highspeed rail network must be back to normal by Monday, Transportation Minister Patrice Vergriete said after sabotaged signal stations and cable televisions caused travel turmoil on Friday, the opening day of the Olympic Games.

French rail operator SNCF reiterated that transportation plans for groups completing in the Paris 2024 Olympics would be guaranteed.

Friday's pre-dawn attacks on the high-speed rail network damaged infrastructure along the lines linking Paris with cities such as Lille in the north, Bordeaux in the west and Strasbourg in the east. Another attack on the Paris-Marseille line was foiled, SNCF has actually said.

There has actually been no immediate claim of responsibility.

Talking to reporters at Paris' Montparnasse train station, Vergriete and SNCF chief Jean-Pierre Farandou stated train services would continue to experience disruption throughout the weekend as they slowly return to normal.

On Friday, 100,000 people might not take their trains, and another 150,000 faced hold-ups but eventually got to their destinations, Vergriete said.

There will still be disturbances tomorrow, Vergriete told press reporters. From Monday, there is no requirement to worry.

Farandou confirmed this, adding that examinations were continuous and they did not yet know who lagged the attack.

SNCF said in a statement that traffic would stay disrupted on Sunday on the North axis however ought to improve on the Atlantic axis for weekend returns.

On the Eastern high-speed line, traffic resumed normally this morning at 6:30 a.m. (0530 GMT) while on the North, Brittany and South-West high-speed lines, 7 out of 10 trains on average will keep up delays of 1 to 2 hours, it said.

2 security sources have said the method operandi suggested initial suspicions fell on leftist militants or ecological activists, however they said there was not yet any evidence.

Prime Minister Gabriel Attal on Friday stated it was prematurely to say who might be behind the sabotage.

What we understand, what we see, is that this operation was prepared, collaborated, that nerve centres were targeted, which reveals a specific knowledge of the network to know where to strike, he said.

(source: Reuters)