ROUEN, France (AP) — French police shot dead a man armed with a knife and a metal bar suspected of burning down a synagogue in the Normandy town of Rouen early Friday, the latest apparent act in a storm of the anti-Semitism that is shaking France in the middle of the war between Israel and Hamas.
Firefighters were alerted early Friday morning to a fire in the synagogue. Deployed police officers found the man on the roof of the building, holding the metal bar in one hand and the kitchen knife in the other, and smoke rising from the synagogue’s windows, the police said. Rouen prosecutor, Frédéric Teillet, during a brief press conference.
He said the man shouted curses and threw the metal bar at the officers before jumping from the roof and then running towards one of the officers with his knife raised.
The police officer fired five shots, hitting the man four times, fatally wounding him, the prosecutor said. He said authorities were working to verify the man’s identity. The prosecutor did not answer any questions.
The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, declared on the social network X that the man “clearly wanted to set fire to the city’s synagogue”.
He praised the officers for “their responsiveness and courage.”
Tensions and anger have increased in France the Israel-Hamas war. Anti-Semitic acts jumped in the country, which has the largest Jewish and Muslim populations in Western Europe.
Rouen Mayor Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol said the man allegedly climbed on a trash can and threw “a sort of Molotov cocktail” inside the synagogue, sparking a fire and causing “significant damage.”
“When the Jewish community is attacked, it is an attack on the national community, an attack on France, an attack on all French citizens,” he said.
“It’s a fright for the whole nation,” he added.
French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said this month that the sharp increase in anti-Semitic acts in France that followed Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7 has continued this year.
Authorities recorded 366 anti-Semitic acts in the first three months of 2024, an increase of 300% compared to the same period last year, Attal said. More than 1,200 anti-Semitic acts were reported in the last three months of 2023, three times more than in all of 2022, he said.
“We are seeing an explosion of hatred,” he said.
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Leicester reported from Paris.
News Source : apnews.com
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