France suspects leftists in rail attacks as telecoms networks hit

PARIS (Reuters) -Vandals targeted France's telecoms networks overnight, piling pressure on French security services trying to secure the Olympics after authorities said they suspected left-wing groups of attacking rail lines ahead of the opening ceremony in Paris.

Police have yet to arrest anyone for Friday's attacks on the high-speed rail lines with explosive devices, but Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said on Monday authorities suspected members of far-left militant groups due to the nature of the sabotage.

"We have identified the profiles of several people," Darmanin told France 2 TV.

A police source said it was "too soon to tell" if there was any link between the telecoms and rail attacks.

French telecoms regulator Arcep said the sabotage of telecom networks affected 11,000 people, mainly customers of the SFR and Free services.

A spokesman for SFR said vandals had made cuts to its long-distance network in five different parts of France in the early hours of Monday. The impact on clients was minimal because the network was designed to reroute traffic, he said.

Free said some of its services had been affected by "a multi-operator network incident" in six different departments across France.

"Since 2.15 a.m. our national network is experiencing significant slowdown," Free said on X. "All our services are provided, sometimes with a degradation in quality of service."

Marina Ferrari, the junior minister for digital matters, said the vandalism was "cowardly and irresponsible." She said work was underway to get services back up and running.

LEFTISTS SUSPECTED

In recent years, France has mainly been targeted in attacks by Islamist militants, but security services have been increasingly concerned about far-left or anarchist groups, which typically oppose the state and capitalism.

The then-head of France's domestic intelligence agency, Nicolas Lerner, told Le Monde newspaper last year President Emmanuel Macron's divisive 2023 pension shake-up had helped lure recruits to far-left groups, which have increasingly added environmental issues to their ideologies.

"In recent years, the far-left movements have been known for particularly violent clandestine actions, including arson campaigns ... ransacking and destruction of property," Lerner, who now leads the foreign spy agency, said in the interview.

In a 2023 report on terrorism trends, European police agency Europol said left-wing and anarchist groups typically attacked "critical infrastructure, such as repeaters and antennas, government institutions and private companies" with their "most common modus operandi" being arson and explosive devices.

Train services in France were back up and running by early Monday after teams worked around the clock at the weekend to fix the damage, Transport Minister Patrice Vergriete told RTL radio.

He said 800,000 people had faced travel disruptions and said the cost to the state-owned rail operator SNCF would be considerable.

(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta and Leigh Thomas; additional reporting by Gabriel Stargardter; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Ros Russell)