FRANCE’S high-speed rail network was hit on Friday with widespread and “criminal” acts of vandalism including arson attacks, paralysing travel to Paris from across the rest of France and Europe.

The attack came only hours before the opening ceremony of the Olympics and as workers took strike action at a five-star Paris hotel where Games officials are staying.

French officials condemned the rail arson attacks as “criminal actions,” though they said there was no sign of a direct link to the Games, and prosecutors in Paris opened a national investigation saying the crimes could carry sentences of 15 to 20 years.

Three fires were reported near the tracks on the high-speed lines of Atlantique, Nord and Est, causing disruptions that affected hundreds of thousands of travellers.

Among those affected were two German athletes in showjumping who were on a train to Paris to take part in the opening ceremony.

Both had to turn back in Belgium because of the French closures, and missed the ceremony.

“There was no longer a chance of making it on time,” rider Philipp Weishaupt, who was travelling with teammate Christian Kukuk, told German press agency dpa.

French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said that France’s intelligence services have been mobilised to find the perpetrators and of “acts of sabotage” which he described as “prepared and co-ordinated.”

It was “a premeditated, calculated, co-ordinated attack” that indicates “a desire to seriously harm” the French people, the rail company’s chief executive Jean-Pierre Farandou said.

Mr Farandou also said that railway maintenance workers managed to thwart a suspected sabotage attempt along tracks heading south-east of Paris when they spotted intruders on the line.

Also on Friday, the French airport of Basel-Mulhouse on the border with Germany and Switzerland was evacuated in the morning and remained temporarily closed “for safety reasons,” the airport said. It wasn’t clear whether there was a connection to the rail attacks.

The travel disruption came a day after workers at the exclusive Hotel du Collectionneur went on strike.

The left-wing French union federation CGT said that the employees were demanding a pay increase, having not received a raise for seven years. 

The workers were forced to take the action after a fifth round of negotiations between the unions and employers failed on Wednesday.

Management at the hotel said: “Negotiations with the unions are under way, without affecting the operation of our hotel.”

In a separate protest, about 200 performers stood along the Seine River on Monday and refused to take part in a rehearsal for the opening ceremony being held Friday, protesting working conditions and inequality in the treatment of entertainment workers at the Paris Games.