The police shot and killed a person in northern France on Friday after he tried to set fireplace to a synagogue within the metropolis of Rouen and attacked officers who tried to cease him, the French authorities stated.
Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol, the mayor of Rouen, a metropolis of about 110,000 individuals, instructed reporters that firefighters had introduced the outbreak of flames underneath management and that nobody aside from the assailant had been harmed.
The id and motives of the person who attacked the synagogue weren’t instantly clear, however the French authorities had been treating it as an antisemitic act. Native prosecutors have opened an investigation into “religiously motivated arson” and assault.
The authorities in France have raised the alarm a couple of surge of antisemitic incidents throughout the nation in current months, in opposition to the backdrop of the struggle in Gaza. Mr. Mayer-Rossignol stated that the episode was nonetheless being investigated however that “in all probability it’s a deeply antisemitic act.”
Anybody who assaults the Jewish group, he added, “is attacking all of France.”
Mr. Mayer-Rossignol stated that the police’s preliminary findings had been that the person broke into the synagogue by climbing atop a trash can round 6:30 a.m. He reached the primary flooring and threw an “incendiary aspect” inside, beginning a hearth that precipitated “important injury” however didn’t hurt anybody, Mr. Mayer-Rossignol stated.
The synagogue is within the historic middle of Rouen, a brief stroll from the town’s famed cathedral.
“The fireplace precipitated loads of injury,” Natacha Ben Haïm, head of the native Jewish group affiliation, instructed reporters, including that furnishings had burned, partitions had been blackened and components of the roof had fallen down. “It’s horrible,” she stated.
Frédéric Teillet, the highest prosecutor in Rouen, stated at a information convention that firefighters and cops who shortly arrived on the scene noticed smoke popping out of synagogue home windows and a person on the roof with a kitchen knife in a single hand and a metallic chisel within the different.
The person shouted on the officers, threw the chisel at them, jumped down from the roof after which brandished the knife as he ran at one of many officers, ignoring orders to cease, Mr. Teillet stated.
The officer fired 5 photographs, 4 of which hit the person, Mr. Teillet stated.
Mr. Teillet stated that the person had been carrying an area public transportation move with a reputation on it however that investigators had been nonetheless verifying his id.
France is on excessive alert over the chance of terrorist assaults and different potential safety threats, particularly within the run-up to the Summer time Olympics in Paris, that are set to start out in July.
The nation was scarred by large-scale Islamist terrorist assaults in 2015 and 2016, and a string of smaller however nonetheless lethal shootings and stabbings in subsequent years have ensured that safety and intelligence forces stay on edge.
France is presently at its highest terror alert degree, which was raised in March after a lethal assault on a Moscow live performance corridor that was claimed by the Islamic State.
The struggle in Gaza and heightened tensions between Israel and Iran have additionally saved the authorities apprehensive about potential repercussions in France, which is house to a few of Europe’s largest Jewish and Muslim populations.
In April, after Iran launched airstrikes in opposition to Israel, Mr. Darmanin ordered elevated safety at synagogues and at Jewish faculties round France.
Gabriel Attal, the French prime minister, stated this month that greater than 360 antisemitic incidents — together with threats, assaults and different acts — had been recorded in France within the first three months of 2024, up 300 p.c from the earlier yr.
After the assault in Rouen, Yonathan Arfi, head of the Consultant Council of Jewish Establishments of France, stated in a social media publish, “Setting fireplace to a synagogue is an try to intimidate all Jews.”
The assault and taking pictures in Rouen got here days after a Holocaust memorial was vandalized in Paris. The memorial, a wall of names that honors those that helped rescue Jews in France throughout World Battle II, was defaced with graffiti of pink fingers.
Chmouel Lubecki, rabbi on the synagogue in Rouen, instructed the information channel BFMTV that he had had no information of particular threats in opposition to the synagogue, however he lamented a local weather of “tensions” and stated that the fireplace didn’t shock him.
“We had this worry inside us, however when it occurs it’s nonetheless stunning,” Rabbi Lubecki stated. He urged the Jewish group to mild candles for Shabbat on Friday “to point out that we aren’t afraid and that we’re persevering with to follow our Judaism regardless of the circumstances.”
