On March 28, 1982, a high-speed
Le Capitole was travelling between
Paris and
Toulouse when bomb exploded in the first of the fifteen passenger cars. The bomb exploded at about 9:30 p.m. when the train was near the town of
Ambazac, about northeast of
Limoges, about three hours after the train had left Paris. The train, which carried between 300 and 400 passengers, was traveling at between and when it exploded. The engineer was able to bring the train to a halt after about a mile without it derailing, but wreckage blocked the track in both directions of travel between Limoges and
Châteauroux. Three of the cars on the train were severely damaged and two of the blast victims were thrown from the train. More than 200 rescuers arrived to help free passengers that were trapped in the train, a process that took several hours. Rescuers had to walk more than half a mile (1km) down the tracks to reach the wreckage. After the passengers were freed, the train was towed to the train station in Ambazac. The bombing was the first time that train passengers in France had been killed by an explosion of a criminal nature. Two other train blasts had occurred in France before, that caused only minor injuries. The bombing was claimed by a group calling itself "International Terrorist Friends of Carlos", and was later attributed to
Venezuelan terrorist
Carlos the Jackal. In 2011 Carlos was convicted for the bombing whilst he was already serving
life imprisonment. The attack was followed with the
bombing of an anti-Syrian newspaper office in Paris in April. ==See also==