French police yesterday shot dead an armed man who was trying to set fire to a synagogue in the northern city of Rouen.
“National police in Rouen neutralised early this morning an armed individual who clearly wanted to set fire to the city’s synagogue,” French Minister of the Interior Gerald Darmanin wrote on social media.
Police responded at 6:45am to reports of “fire near the synagogue,” a police source said.
Photo: AFP
A source close to the case said that the man “was armed with a knife and an iron bar, he approached police, who fired. The individual died.”
“It is not only the Jewish community that is affected. It is the entire city of Rouen that is bruised and in shock,” Rouen Mayor Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol wrote on social media.
He made clear there were no other victims other than the attacker.
Two separate investigations have been opened, one into the fire at the synagogue and another into the circumstances of the death of the individual killed by police, Rouen prosecutors said.
Such an investigation by France’s police inspectorate general is automatic whenever an individual is killed by police officers.
The man threatened a police officer with a knife and the latter used his service weapon, the Rouen prosecutor said.
The dead man was not immediately identified, a police source said.
The National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office said that it was assessing whether it would take up the case.
France has the largest Jewish community of any nation after Israel and the US, as well as Europe’s largest Muslim community.
There have been tensions in France in the wake of last year’s Oct. 7 attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel, followed by the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip.
Red hand graffiti was painted onto France’s Holocaust Memorial earlier this week, prompted anger including from French President Emmanuel Macron, who condemned “odious anti-Semitism.”
“Attempting to burn a synagogue is an attempt to intimidate all Jews. Once again, there is an attempt to impose a climate of terror on the Jews of our country. Combating anti-Semitism means defending the Republic,” Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France president Yonathan Arfi wrote on social media.
France was hit from 2015 by a spate of Islamist attacks that also hit Jewish targets. The nation’s security alert remains at its highest level.
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