Trains across France halted by coordinated arson attacks ahead of Olympics opening

A series of coordinated arson attacks on the train infrastructure of France's largest rail company, SNCF, caused a significant number of trains to be re-routed or cancelled on Friday morning.

The attack disrupted the transport system on the opening day of the 2024 Paris Olympics, with delays of up to two hours, if not outright cancellations, affecting hundreds of thousands of passengers across the country.

At the Montparnasse train station in Paris, dozens of passengers are standing in the main hall with their eyes peeled on the information screens or their own phones and laptops.

Most don't know what is happening and whether their train is cancelled or delayed, while some are desperately looking for alternatives.

“I'm getting a lot of contradictory information, I don't understand what’s going on,” 59-year-old Stefan from the suburbs of Paris told Euronews.

He was supposed to take a train to the coastal town of Royan to meet his girlfriend. However, his train has been delayed and is likely to be cancelled.

Yet, Stefan was trying not to remain too frustrated, he said. "The love for my girlfriend is stronger than the delays. It's just making me even more impatient to see her again."

Lara from Paris was supposed to go to Bordeaux this morning at 7:30 am, yet her train got cancelled by 11 am. She ended up having to rent a car with her boyfriend to drive all the way there — but that wasn't an easy task either.

"It was impossible to rent a car at Gare Montparnasse, they were literally completely booked up," she told Euronews.

After finding a car online, Lara and her partner found it was gone by the time they got to it, and the next available vehicle was on the other side of the city.

Getting out of Paris was also horrible because of