French police kill man who tried to set fire to Rouen synagogue

Police shot and killed a man in northern France on Friday after he tried to set fire to a synagogue in the city of Rouen and attacked officers who tried to stop him, French authorities said.

Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol, the mayor of Rouen, a city of about 110,000 people, told reporters that firefighters had brought the blaze under control and no one but the attacker was injured.

The identity and motives of the man who attacked the synagogue were not immediately clear, but French authorities considered it an anti-Semitic act. The local public prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation into “religiously motivated arson” and bodily harm.

The French authorities have warned of a wave of anti-Semitic incidents across the country in recent months against the backdrop of the Gaza war. Mr Mayer-Rossignol said the incident was still under investigation but that it was “in all likelihood a deeply anti-Semitic act”.

Anyone who attacks the Jewish community, he added, “is attacking all of France.”

Mr Mayer-Rossignol said police’s initial findings were that the man broke into the synagogue at around 6:30 a.m. by climbing a trash can. He arrived on the first floor and threw an “incendiary element” inside, starting a fire that “”It caused significant damage” but harmed no one,” Mr. Mayer-Rossignol said.

The synagogue is located in the historic center of Rouen, just a short walk from the city’s famous cathedral.

“The fire caused a lot of damage,” Natacha Ben Haïm, head of the local Jewish community association, told reporters, adding that furniture was burned, walls were blackened and parts of the roof collapsed. “It’s terrible,” she said.

Frédéric Teillet, the top prosecutor in Rouen, said at a news conference that firefighters and police who quickly arrived at the scene saw smoke rising from the synagogue’s windows and a man on the roof with a kitchen knife in one hand and a metal chisel in the other Hand saw the other.

The man screamed at the officers, threw the chisel at them, jumped down from the roof and then swung the knife as he ran toward one of the officers, ignoring orders to stop, Mr. Teillet said.

The officer fired five shots, four of which hit the man, Mr. Teillet said.

Mr Teillet said the man had been carrying a public transport card with a name on it, but that investigators were still verifying his identity.

France is on high alert due to the risk of terrorist attacks and other potential security threats, particularly in the run-up to the Summer Olympics in Paris, which are scheduled to begin in July.

The country was scarred by large-scale Islamist terror attacks in 2015 and 2016, and a series of smaller but still fatal shootings and knife attacks in subsequent years left security and intelligence forces under continued strain.

France is currently on the highest terror alert level, which was raised in March after a deadly attack on a Moscow concert hall claimed by the Islamic State.

The war in Gaza and rising tensions between Israel and Iran have also worried authorities about possible impacts in France, home to some of Europe’s largest Jewish and Muslim populations.

In April, after Iran launched airstrikes against Israel, Mr. Darmanin ordered increased security measures for synagogues and Jewish schools across France.

Gabriel Attal, the French prime minister, said this month that more than 360 anti-Semitic incidents – including threats, attacks and other acts – were recorded in France in the first three months of 2024, up 300 percent from the previous year.

After the attack in Rouen, Yonathan Arfi, head of France’s Representative Council of Jewish Institutions, said in a social media post: “Setting fire to a synagogue is an attempt to intimidate all Jews.”

The attack and shooting in Rouen came days after the destruction of a Holocaust memorial in Paris. The memorial, a wall of names honoring those who helped save France’s Jews during World War II, was defaced with graffiti depicting red hands.

Chmouel Lubecki, rabbi of the synagogue in Rouen, told news channel BFMTV he was not aware of any specific threats against the synagogue, but complained of a climate of “tension” and said the fire did not surprise him.

“We had this fear inside of us, but when it happens, it’s still shocking,” Rabbi Lubecki said. He called on the Jewish community to light candles on Shabbat Friday “to show that we are not afraid and continue to practice our Judaism despite the circumstances.”