Repairs complete on French train lines damaged before Olympic opening

Repair work has been completed on three high-speed train lines in France which were hit by arson attacks before the official opening of the Olympic Games.

Trains are running again on the lines without delays, the state railway operator SNCF announced.

On the route between Paris and the south-west of France, practically all the scheduled trains were said to be running again.

On the route to the north, which is used by trains travelling between Cologne and Paris, three out of four scheduled trains were running, with no delays.

The eastbound line from Paris towards Strasbourg, Stuttgart and Frankfurt has been back in regular service since Saturday.

The arson attacks overnight Thursday to Friday severely disrupted rail traffic shortly before the start of the Olympic Games, affecting hundreds of thousands of people.

It is not yet known who is behind the attacks.

According to the newspaper Le Parisien, the attacks could possibly have been carried out by radical left-wingers.

An unusual letter of confession with references to the ultra-left was sent to several French and international media, Le Parisien reported on Saturday evening.

The perpetrators claimed responsibility for the arson attacks and suggested that their motive was to disrupt the Olympic Games.

Investigators are now looking into whether it was a genuine confession of a false claim.

"We have a number of findings that make us confident that we will know fairly quickly who is responsible," Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin told broadcaster France 2 on Saturday.