French authorities have stepped up security at Jewish institutions and opened a terror investigation after a blazing car exploded outside a synagogue on Saturday in the southern town of La Grande-Motte, injuring a police officer.
Local media said two cars, one of which contained at least one gas bottle, had been set on fire outside the Beth Yaacov synagogue in La Grande-Motte, at about 8:30 a.m on Saturday.
Acting Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said France's national anti-terror prosecutors (Pnat) had been tasked with probing the incident.
"La Grande Motte's synagogue was the target of an attack this morning," Attal said in a post on social media platform X. "An anti-semitic act. Once again, our Jewish fellow citizens are being targeted."
Earlier, acting Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin called the incident "an obviously criminal act" and said police were looking for a suspect.
"I want to assure our fellow Jewish citizens and the municipality of all my support and say that at the request of the President of the Republic @EmmanuelMacron, all means are being mobilised to find the perpetrator [of the attack]," Darmanin said on X.
Darmanin and Attal are due to travel to the scene later on Saturday.
'Attempt to kill Jews'
One police officer was injured in the explosion. William Maury, of police union Alliance Police Nationale, told BFM TV the officer's life was not in danger.
The five people inside the synagogue at the time, including the rabbi, were not injured.
Stéphane Rossignol, the mayor of La Grande-Motte, told Le Figaro daily that surveillance cameras had shown an individual setting fire to vehicles in front of the synagogue.
Several politicians as well as Jewish organisations denounced the explosion as an antisemitic attack.
"Exploding a gas bottle in a car in front of the Grande Motte synagogue at the expected time of arrival of the faithful: it's not just attacking a place of worship, it's an attempt to kill Jews," Yonathan Arfi, who leads the CRIF, an umbrella organisation of French Jewish groups, said on X.
In May, French police shot dead an armed man who was trying to set fire to a synagogue in the northern city of Rouen.
France, like other countries in Europe, has seen a surge in antisemitic incidents following the Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October and Israel's retaliatory assault on Gaza.
Anti-Semitism in France 'quadrupled' on back of Israel-Hamas war
(with newswires)
