France’s growing bedbug crisis has sparked a political row as Paris city hall said the invasion of bloodsucking insects must be tackled before next year’s Olympic Games and the transport minister summoned train and bus operators to prevent the bugs multiplying on seats.

A wave of panic and disgust has spread across the country as travellers have posted photos and videos purportedly showing the insects on the Paris local transport system, high-speed trains and at Charles de Gaulle airport.

Representatives from Paris city hall wrote to the prime minister, Élisabeth Borne, this week with a plea for a dedicated national taskforce to deal with what it called a “scourge” of the insects.

The newspaper Le Parisien ran a front-page article on the panic over bedbugs on Friday, calling the problem a form of “domestic terror”.

Mathilde Panot, head of the leftwing La France Insoumise party in parliament, said bedbugs had “caused hell for millions of families in this country” and the government must act.

They must stop telling people to just deal with it themselves as if it’s an individual problem, while companies charge exorbitant tariffs to spray chemical products that bedbugs are resistant to.

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