Paris, France - Dozens of people have been arrested in France for planning to disrupt the Olympic Games, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said on Monday, amid widespread protests against the Paris event.

Security forces detained nearly 50 people, Darmanin told the France 2 television channel. They had wanted to carry out "sabotage actions or radical protests" during the first Olympic competitions, but authorities prevented this, he said.

The newspaper Le Parisien reported that 45 members of the environmental movement Extinction Rebellion had been arrested. They had planned actions to protest against the dire social and ecological consequences of the Olympics, with thousands of vulnerable or unhoused people forcibly removed from Paris ahead of the Games in what some experts have described as "social cleansing."

The newspaper Le Figaro reported that a left-wing activist was arrested on Sunday in Oissel, about 75 miles north-west of Paris.

The man was arrested at a location of the French national rail service, SNCF, and had "access keys to SNCF technical premises" along with "wire cutters [and a] set of universal keys" in his vehicle along with literature linked to the ultra-left, the story said.

The Paris prosecutor's office said that this arrest was not connected to the investigation into the arson attacks that disrupted traffic on Friday hours ahead of the Olympics' opening ceremonies, affecting hundreds of thousands of travelers. No arrests have been made yet in that incident, the office confirmed.

Thousands of people throughout France have been protesting against the Olympics, as well as the inclusion of Israeli athletes involved to varying degrees in their country's brutal war on Palestinians.