French railway company SNCF said it had been hit by a "massive attack" overnight Thursday aimed at paralyzing its network, which is experiencing "severe disruption" hours before the opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics.

SNCF said in a statement that "several simultaneous malicious acts" affected its Atlantic, North and East lines, explaining that "deliberate fires were set with the aim of damaging" high-speed line facilities.

The company said its teams are "in the field to perform diagnostics and begin repairs" but "this situation is expected to continue at least through the weekend to make repairs."

It also said that cables operating high-speed train lines were burned, and that the "sabotage" affected 800,000 passengers. It added that the disruptions to high-speed trains could continue at least through the weekend.

Reuters also quoted Eurostar, the high-speed train operator, as saying that several flights between Paris and London had been cancelled and other flights to and from Paris had been diverted after the "sabotage" acts, and that it had advised passengers not to travel today.

For his part, French Transport Minister Patrice Vergerat said that the "coordinated malicious acts" targeted high-speed train lines and would lead to disruption of traffic "until the end of the week."

In turn, the Prime Minister said that the "sabotage" operations were coordinated and the consequences for the railways were "enormous and serious," stressing that the security and law enforcement agencies were mobilized to find and punish the perpetrators of these "criminal" acts.

In a later development, Agence France-Presse reported that Basel-Mulhouse Airport on the French-Swiss border was evacuated "for security reasons."

In anticipation of any security threat, the French authorities mobilized 45,000 police and gendarmes, and 18,000 soldiers, in addition to completely closing the airspace within a 150-kilometre radius around Paris, from 6:30 pm until midnight.

Source: Agencies