Crowds gather at Paris train stations as travel chaos unfolds ahead of Olympics

Vandals struck France’s high-speed train network in a series of pre-dawn attacks that caused chaos on the country’s busiest rail lines ahead of the Paris Olympics opening ceremony on Friday 26 July.

The coordinated sabotage took place as France rolled out an unprecedented peacetime security operation involving tens of thousands of police and soldiers to lockdown the capital for the Games, sucking in security resources from across the country.

Footage shows crowds gathering at rail stations in Paris as hundreds of thousands across the country were left stranded on platforms.

The state-owned railway operator said vandals had damaged signal boxes along the lines connecting Paris with cities such as Lille in the north, Bordeaux in the west and Strasbourg in the east.