A senior official of Italy’s national rail operator was summoned to the transport ministry on Tuesday after several incidents in which passengers complained of being infected or bitten by ticks, fleas and lice on trains, some of them serving Paris.
Trenitalia’s Roberto Testore was called to a meeting with a junior minister as officials began an inquiry into Sunday’s incident on a regional train from Turin, northern Italy, when passengers in one compartment complained about being attacked by ticks, fleas and other bugs.
A few hours later, passengers on a Paris-bound service from Vintimiglia, near the border with France, halted their train for four hours at Marseille, protesting that they, too, had been attacked.
French medical personnel inspected the train and one of the carriages was removed, but about 80 of the travellers refused to get back on board. — AFP