France hit by another sabotage: Vandals target telecom installations amid Paris Olympics 2024

France has been hit by another round of sabotage as vandals targeted multiple telecommunications lines.

Installations belonging to French telecom companies SFR and Bouygues Telecom were vandalised on Sunday evening, the French Le Parisien newspaper reported on Monday. The cables had been cut in southern France, with installations near Luxembourg and Paris sabotaged.

French Secretary of State for Digital Affairs Marina Ferrari confirmed the acts of vandalism, but said they had "localised consequences". "Damages committed in several departments last night affected our telecommunications operators. They have localized consequences on access to fiber, fixed telephony and mobile telephony," she said. 

Ferrari condemned in the strongest terms the "cowardly and irresponsible acts" and thanked the teams mobilised to carry out repairs and restore damaged sites to service.

Earlier, train services were sabotaged in the country, which is hosting Olympics 2024. The sabotaged happened just as the Olympic Games were about to begin.
France suspects members of far-left groups were behind the sabotage of the high-speed rail network last week, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said on Monday.

Saboteurs struck the network on Friday with pre-dawn attacks on signal substations and cables at critical points, causing travel chaos hours before the opening ceremony in Paris. "We have identified the profiles of several people," Darmanin told France 2 TV, adding that the sabotage bore the hallmarks of far-left groups.

The Paris prosecutors office said no arrests had been made so far. A police official involved in the probe said it was "too soon to tell" if there was a link with acts of vandalism overnight that targeted the country's telecommunications network, Reuters reported.