France suspects leftists in rail attacks as telecoms networks hit
Clients of SFR and Free mainly impacted
Comes just days after rail sabotage
France on high alert as Olympics take place
Adds details on how telecoms network was hit, paragraphs 2-3, Paris police chief and investigation, paragraphs 6-8
By Gabriel Stargardter and Leigh Thomas
PARIS, July 29 (Reuters) -Vandals sabotaged 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.
The cuts to long distance telecoms cables at five sites early on Monday "look like sabotage", Romain Bonenfant, general director of the French Telecoms Federation, told Reuters.
"It was an operation that was prepared. If it wasn't people who work for (us), it was people who had information."
Police have yet to arrest anyone for Friday's attacks on 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.
Paris police chief Laurent Nunez declined to say whether there was any link between the telecoms and rail attacks.
"There is a modus operandi in that first attack that makes you think of the far-left," he told reporters.
However, like the rail attacks investigation, the Paris prosecutors office said the telecoms probe would be overseen by its organised crime office, with the anti-terrorist sub-directorate (SDAT), a branch of the judicial police that typically monitors far-left, far-right and radical environmental groups, coordinating investigations.
French telecoms regulator Arcep said the sabotage of telecom networks affected 11,000 people, mainly customers of the SFR and Free services.
A spokesperson for SFR said the impact was minimal because the network was designed to reroute traffic. 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."
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; Writing by Charlotte Van Campenhout, Editing by Andrew Heavens and Ros Russell
免責聲明: XM Group提供線上交易平台的登入和執行服務，允許個人查看和/或使用網站所提供的內容，但不進行任何更改或擴展其服務和訪問權限，並受以下條款與條例約束：（i）條款與條例；（ii）風險提示；（iii）完全免責聲明。網站內部所提供的所有資訊，僅限於一般資訊用途。請注意，我們所有的線上交易平台內容並不構成，也不被視為進入金融市場交易的邀約或邀請 。金融市場交易會對您的投資帶來重大風險。
所有缐上交易平台所發佈的資料，僅適用於教育/資訊類用途，不包含也不應被視爲適用於金融、投資稅或交易相關諮詢和建議，或是交易價格紀錄，或是任何金融商品或非應邀途徑的金融相關優惠的交易邀約或邀請。
本網站的所有XM和第三方所提供的内容，包括意見、新聞、研究、分析、價格其他資訊和第三方網站鏈接，皆爲‘按原狀’，並作爲一般市場評論所提供，而非投資建議。請理解和接受，所有被歸類為投資研究範圍的相關内容，並非爲了促進投資研究獨立性，而根據法律要求所編寫，而是被視爲符合營銷傳播相關法律與法規所編寫的内容。請確保您已詳讀並完全理解我們的非獨立投資研究提示和風險提示資訊，相關詳情請點擊 這裡查看。
