A senior SNCF executive blamed militant strikers for the damage and said police were hunting those responsible.
“These are genuine acts of sabotage. It is extremely shocking,” the SNCF's Mireille Faugere said. “We think it was the diehard (strikers),” she added.

The majority of railway workers are now back at work ahead of the resumption of negotiations in their dispute over pension reform and the SNCF had predicted that four out of seven high speed TGV trains would have run on Wednesday — an improvement on recent days.

The SNCF warned passengers to expect delays of up to four hours on the TGV network, which carries the bulk of traffic between major French cities, as engineers repaired the damage.

Officials said the attacks happened shortly before 6:00 am with arsonists damaging 30 km of signalling in the west and burning cabling on the eastern TGV line. Saboteurs in the north and southeast shut down signal switches.

Compromises

Government, unions and management are due to resume talks at both the SNCF and the RAPT Paris transport company in an effort to end a strike that started on November 14.

The negotiations are scheduled to run into December, but President Nicolas Sarkozy has called on remaining strikers to return to work while details of a possible deal are discussed.

Sarkozy said he would not renounce the core element of his pension reform, which entails an end to early retirement rights for transport and energy workers, but indicated he was ready to make concessions in other areas.

Head of France’s business lobby, Laurence Parisot, said the dispute was causing huge damage to the economy. “The cost of the strike is quite simply incalculable.”