Antisemitism: French Police Kill Algerian Muslim Who Set Fire To Rouen Synagogue

👹 French police shot dead a knife-wielding Algerian man who set fire to a synagogue and threatened police in the city of Rouen on Friday in the latest antisemitic attack, officials said.

"An armed man somehow climbed up the synagogue and threw an object, a sort of Molotov cocktail, into the main praying room," said mayor Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol, adding that nobody else was harmed in the shocked city in the northwestern Normandy region.

Police found the man on the synagogue roof with an iron bar and kitchen knife, shooting him when he defied orders to stop.

France, like many countries across Europe, has seen a huge spike in anti-Jewish acts since Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on Israel and Israel's military response in Gaza.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said the attacker's bid for a residency permit had been recently rejected. He was otherwise not on the radar of police or intelligence services.

"This antisemitic act affects us all deeply," Darmanin said after visiting the synagogue, adding that France was doing all it could to protect its Jewish community.

The synagogue's rabbi Chmouel Lubecki said his wife was there at the time of the attack.

"We had a great fright," he told BFM TV.

His wife "heard gunshots and screams ... and then she saw smoke coming from the synagogue, so she immediately went down, she helped the firefighters get in the synagogue."

Such an attack was expected, he said, due to the rise in antisemitism. "We had this fear inside of us, but when it actually happens, it's still shocking."