In several places in France, vandals have destroyed installations belonging to telephone operators SFR, Free and Bouygues.
Fibre cables, essential for phone and internet communication, were cut. Operators referred to the acts as “sabotage”.
The attacks took place overnight on July 28, police announced.
Communication systems were damaged in the Departments of Bouches-du-Rhône, Aude, Oise, Hérault, Meuse and Drôme.
Paris, the main location for the Olympic Games, has not been affected by what the police called “nocturnal sabotage”.
As of writing, no one had claimed responsibility for the acts.
The disruption of the country’s communication network came days after a co-ordinated attack on France’s high-speed train network on July 26, just hours before the Games’ opening ceremony.
In that incident, far-left militant actvisits were suspected.
One individual allegedly linked to the group was reportedly arrested in relation to the attack against the high-speed train network.
According to French interior minister Gérald Darmanin, the main question now was whether suspected left-wing extremists involved in the attack were working alone.
France's high-speed train network has been attacked just before the Olympics. Here's where it was hit. ⬇️
Read the full article ?? https://t.co/Wjbp5GmJCP #Paris2024 #Olympics #OlympicGames pic.twitter.com/c11GNpq382
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) July 26, 2024
Over the weekend of July 27, several media outlets had received an anonymous e-mail claiming the attack on the railways. The e-mail also criticised the Olympics as a “celebration of nationalism” and “a gigantic display of the oppression of peoples and States”.
On July 27, someone sent a letter to Darmanin that contained, according to initial analyses, traces of plague. The Dijon prosecutor’s office has opened a judicial investigation.
The letter, which was not stamped, was addressed to the “Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin” and the town hall of Roubaix.
When the mail was opened, the police discovered racial insults as well as traces of a black powder. Further testing is ongoing and initial results may have been a so-called false positive, said the Pasteur Institute, which is conducting the analysis.
For the time being, the author of the letter has not been identified.
On the same day, authorities arrested 45 activists with the radical environmentalist group Extinction Rebellion. They are suspected of having wanted to disrupt the Games and have been placed in police custody.
In addition, the Paris prosecutor’s office said that nine people, including a minor, were arrested on the afternoon of July 26. They were allegedly equipped with “with climbing equipment” and are “suspected of being militants of ‘radical ecology”, a police source told France Télévisions.
France is also investigating death threats against three Israeli athletes. Threatening e-mails were sent to the Olympic delegation, the public prosecutor’s office has reported.
Israeli sportsmen and women were already receiving 24-hour police protection after members of the French Socialist New Popular Front (NFP) demanded Israel’s exclusion from the competition.
