PARIS - A busy railway hub in Paris suffered a near-total traffic shutdown after vandals triggered a crippling signal malfunction by setting cables on fire.
Traffic from Gare de l'Est, which serves routes to Germany and eastern France, and is a key local train commuter hub for the capital's eastern outskirts, was cut for the entire day, except for a handful of local services, operator SNCF said.
Transport Minister Clement Beaune told reporters it was not certain whether operations could return to normal on Wednesday.
The fire broke out at a signals point in the small hours ahead of the morning rush hour, in what was first thought to be an accident but which subsequently turned out to be arson, it said.
"This was a fire started deliberately," a spokeswoman for SNCF told AFP.
There was no immediate indication as to who the perpetrators were or what their intention was in targeting a small but crucial piece of infrastructure.
Officials initially said that services could resume by mid-morning but that hope was quickly dashed.
- 'Deliberate vandalism' -
Beaune said 48 bundled cables had been destroyed, housing 600 individual electrical cables.
"It's an act of deliberate vandalism," Anne-Marie Palmier, head of SNCF's Paris region network, told reporters at the station.
The operator filed a criminal complaint with police.
Prosecutors in the eastern town of Meaux said they had launched a criminal investigation against persons unknown for deliberately causing damage and endangering the lives of others.
The cables' function was to transmit data to signalling posts. "Safety conditions can no longer be guaranteed," Vaires said.
Dozens of network specialists were on site to repair the damage, Beaune said.