Ten arrests over rail sabotage

POLICE have arrested 10 people in connection with a series of attacks on railways, which disrupted services over the weekend and on Monday.

Interior Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie said the arrests were a result of surveillance carried out for several months on far-left and anarchists groups by the Direction Centrale du Renseignement Intérieur (DCRI – the new “French FBI”) and Sous-Direction Anti-Terroriste (SDAT).

The arrests took place across France including at Tarnac, Corrèze, Rouen and Paris.

Thousands of passengers faced delays as 160 trains were cancelled or diverted from special high-speed lines to ordinary tracks after iron bars were thrown on to the overhead lines in several incidents over the weekend.

Among the high-speed services hit were the Eurostar and TGV trains between Paris, Lille and Belgium.

Yesterday a TGV hit concrete blocks which were placed on its track, in another attack.

No-one was injured in the incident, which damaged the nose of the train.

The incident happened late Sunday near Narbonne, southwest France, on a train heading from the Belgian capital Brussels to Perpignan, said the SNCF.

Among the high-speed services hit were the Eurostar and TGV trains between Paris, Lille and Belgium.

Thousands of passengers faced delays as 160 trains were cancelled or diverted from the special high-speed lines to ordinary tracks after iron bars were thrown on to the overhead lines in several incidents.

The Interior Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie has ordered the head of the gendarmerie nationale Roland Gilles to lead an investigation into the attacks.

Le Figaro reports SNCF engineers believe the attacks at Pasilly (Yonne), Fresnoy-la-Rivière and Montagny-Sainte-Félicité (Oise) and Coulombs-en-Valois (Seine-et-Marne) were deliberate, co-ordinated and carried out by people who knew exactly the right way to destroy the cables.

The discovery of the body of a man on an ordinary-speed railway in northern Paris added further difficulties.

SNCF head Guillaume Pepy said on French television that he was "very, very angry" after what he said was the fourth incident of "malevolence, if not sabotage" in three weeks.

He said the company would step up its surveillance of the system and react more swiftly when incidents occurred.

Transport minister Dominique Bussereau condemned the acts of vandalism and called for those responsible to be caught. He also urged that monitoring of rail infrastructure be stepped up.

Earlier this month the government promised €13billion exclusively for the renovation of lines, including overheard power cables, following a series of delays.
Photo: Sebastian Terfloth