Paris prepares for 2024 Games opening ceremony after railway arson
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 10 ก.ย. 2024
- Paris prepares for 2024 Games opening ceremony after railway arson
“It’s a beautiful city and a beautiful view despite the rain - we are wet, but the mood is optimistic,” Matvii Bidnyi, Ukraine’s acting minister of youth and sports, told Richa Naidu.
“It’s really important for Ukraine to be here. We have 140 Ukrainian athletes and that’s a big win.”
“It’s important to show our resilience and our will to win. We are here and Russia is not.”
Lots of people gathering in local mayoral buildings across the city to watch the Games on giant TV screens, like here in the 9th arrondissement’s town hall. You can hear people chatting in English, Spanish or Arabic.
Weather clears but could rain again
16 minutes ago
23:38 +07
Skies are clearing over the Eiffel Tower at the moment, but weather forecasters say there is around a 70 percent chance of rain at 2000 local time, rising to over 80 percent at 2300, Philip O'Connor reports.
The attacks marked an inauspicious start to the Olympic Games as France prepares to stage one of the most ambitious Opening Ceremonies ever seen.
Some 45,000 police, 10,000 soldiers and 2,000 private security agents have been deployed to secure the Games' opening ceremony. Snipers will be on rooftops, and drones in the air. But while the capital is locked down for the opening ceremony, security elsewhere in the country is lighter.
SNCF chief Jean-Pierre Farandou said some 800,000 customers had been impacted ahead of a busy weekend for French holidaymakers.
Eurostar's high-speed services linking London and Paris were forced onto slower lines while Germany's Deutsche Bahn warned of disruption to long-distance services. The attacks will make it tougher for people heading to Paris from other areas of France.
Nobody has claimed responsibility for the attacks and France's Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said it was too early to speculate about who might be behind them. Two security sources told Reuters that the mode of attack meant initial suspicions fell on leftist militants or environmental activists, but cautioned they did not yet have any evidence.
The Paris prosecutor's office said an investigation would be overseen by its organised crime office, with the anti-terrorist sub-directorate (SDAT), a branch of the judicial police that typically monitors far-left, far-right and radical environmental groups, coordinating investigations.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said in June that the alliance had seen several examples of "sabotage, of arson attempts" by Russia, but there is no indication that Moscow might have been behind Friday's attacks in France.
Explosive devices set off fires on signalling infrastructure on three railway lines going into Paris, rail operator SNCF said. The attacks hit the lines from cities such as Lille in the north, Bordeaux in the west and Strasbourg in the east.
Another attack on the Paris-Marseille line was foiled. One attack happened by lines near Courtalain, southwest of Paris, another in Pagny-sur-Moselle in northeast France and the other in Croisilles near the Belgian border.
Pictures released by SNCF showed engineers repairing charred cables in signal substations.
The opening ceremony is being billed as the most sprawling and elaborate Olympic opening ever - a spectacular Friday evening on the River Seine.
The ceremony will be followed by 16 days of competition that promise to be ground-breaking, with nearly every corner of the city hosting some aspect of the game.
Hundreds of thousands of people, including 320,000 paying and invited ticket-holders, are expected to line the Seine’s banks as athletes are paraded along the river on boats.
Over 40,000 police and gendarmes and soldiers are protecting Paris and its suburbs that together are hosting most of the 32 sports that will crown Olympic champions in a total of 329 medal events.
The Paris Olympics will kick off under heavy security on Friday with an unprecedented opening ceremony on the river Seine just hours after a sabotage attack on France's high-speed TGV rail network.
For the first time, the Games' opening ceremony, which starts at 7:30 p.m. (1730 GMT), will not take place in a stadium. Instead, around 85 boats will carry nearly 7,000 athletes on a 6km floating parade. Departing from the Austerlitz bridge, they will sail past the Notre-Dame cathedral and arrive near the Eiffel Tower, after passing near many of the French capital's landmarks.
Some 80 giant screens along the way will broadcast the show, which is also expected to feature dancers performing on building rooftops along the Seine.
More than 300,000 spectators will watch from the banks of the river, and up to three billion television viewers are likely to tune in.
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