Olympics 2024 opening ceremony LIVE: Travel chaos plagues Paris games after ‘sabotage’ arson attack

A mixture of the Eurostar cancellations and the Friday night no-fly zone in Paris has despatched coach fares between the UK and the French capital hovering.

On FlixBus, the few remaining seats from London on Friday and Tuesday are promoting for over £100, with some reaching effectively over £200.

The quickest journey time is round 10 hours, 4 occasions longer than Eurostar on a standard day – although some rail journeys are taking twice so long as scheduled.

The 12.31pm from London St Pancras to Paris Gare du Nord was due in at 3.48pm native time, however in reality arrived at 6pm.

Passengers are entitled to 60 per cent of their ticket value again.

Three Eurostar trains from London to Paris, representing round 2,500 passengers, have been cancelled on Friday.

Our intrepid reporters Jack Rathborn and Jamie Braidwood have survived the chaos on the trains, shoddy Eurostar WiFi and a sticker snafu on the accreditation desk (don’t ask…) to make it nearly intact to the Trocadero, the place tonight’s opening ceremony will conclude. “Very moist,” is Jack’s moderately pessimistic first impression, although he quickly wipes away the liquid off his keyboard to offer a barely extra detailed replace:

“It’s a moist night in Paris and the town is eerily quiet all through. An awesome police presence and lengthy queues to cross roads has moderately dampened the urge for food for the Paris Video games forward of the grand opening.

“However it’s stopped raining in the interim and the Trocadero space boasts a panoramic view of the Eiffel Tower with the Olympic rings dangling above the balcony. Progressively the temper is changing into brighter.”

The clock has ticked previous an hour to go till all of it will get underway, organisers making their remaining checks to the flotilla earlier than sending it down the Seine. Sure, if we overlook the truth that we’ve already had two days of fascinating competitors, the Olympics are formally right here, with a glitzy, glamorous and aquatic journey previous the Paris landmarks certain to kick issues off in fashion.

Some 45,000 police, 10,000 troopers and a pair of,000 personal safety brokers have been deployed to safe the video games’ opening ceremony, one of the formidable opening ceremonies ever.

Snipers might be on rooftops, and drones within the air.

The Paris prosecutor’s workplace stated an investigation into the arson assaults could be overseen by its organised crime workplace, with the anti-terrorist sub-directorate (SDAT), a department of the judicial police that usually displays far-left, far-right and radical environmental teams, coordinating investigations.

Nato Secretary-Normal Jens Stoltenberg stated in June that the alliance had seen a number of examples of “sabotage, of arson makes an attempt” by Russia, however there isn’t a indication that Moscow may need been behind Friday’s assaults in France.

Two planeloads of passengers on Air France flights to Paris Charles De Gaulle airport are about to find the eerie feeling of touchdown at a abandoned airport, writes Simon Calder.

Paris Charles de Gaulle, the busiest airport in Continental Europe, is within the huge no-fly zone imposed from 6pm French time to after midnight to guard the opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympic Video games.

Airways cancelled tons of of flights, and in-built a “buffer” with the final scheduled arrivals at 5.10pm. The ultimate landing was anticipated to be the Air France flight from Edinburgh, which landed at 5.16pm.

However Flightradar24 reviews that two late-running Air France jets got particular permission to land at across the time the curfew begins.

One is an Airbus A320 flight from the Greek island of Mykonos; the opposite, a long-haul Boeing 777 from Seoul.

The French prime minister Gabriel Attal stated the nation’s intelligence providers had been mobilised to seek out the perpetrators of “acts of sabotage” which he described as “ready and co-ordinated”.

He stated the sabotage and arson had “a transparent goal: blocking the high-speed prepare community”.

He added that the vandals strategically focused routes from the north, east and west in direction of Paris.

It was “a premeditated, calculated, co-ordinated assault” that signifies “a want to noticeably hurt” the French individuals, the SNCF rail firm’s chief govt Jean-Pierre Farandou stated.

The French inside minister Gérald Darmanin says detectives are hoping to shortly make arrests over the sabotage of the SNCF rail community.

LeBron James and Coco Gauff are Group USA’s flag-bearers on the opening ceremony for the Paris 2024 Olympics, with over 400 athletes becoming a member of them together with diver Tom Daley and rower Helen Glover, two of Britain’s most embellished Olympians.

Basketball legend James, who received gold on the London Olympics in 2012, might be accompanied by tennis star Gauff, who makes her Olympic debut in Paris. Each of America’s brightest athletes would be the penultimate pair to hold their nation’s flag on the parade, behind host nation France’s Florent Manaudou and Melina Robert-Michon.