French police kill armed man trying to burn down synagogue

French police shot dead an armed man who set fire to a synagogue in the northwestern city of Rouen on Friday and threatened police with a knife, the local prosecutor said.

The synagogue suffered extensive damage from the fire, but no one else was harmed, said Rouen mayor Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol, adding that the Normandy town was "battered and shocked."

"An armed man somehow climbed up the synagogue and threw an object, a sort of Molotov cocktail, into the main praying room," he told reporters.

The man was an Algerian whose application for a residency permit in France for health treatment had been rejected by the authorities, France's Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said.

The suspect had lodged an appeal against an expulsion order but this had been rejected and he was then wanted by the security forces for deportation, said Darmanin. But he had no record of radicalization, the minister said.

"If he had been arrested he would have been put into detention ahead of expulsion to his home country," said Darmanin.

The minister praised the 25-year-old police officer who shot and killed the man, saying he will be decorated for his "extremely courageous, extremely professional" behavior. 

The officer fired five shots, hitting the man four times, fatally wounding him, Rouen prosecutor Frédéric Teillet said at a brief news conference.

'Antisemitic wave'

France, like many countries across Europe, has seen a huge spike in antisemitic acts since Israel launched a military incursion into Gaza in response to Hamas' October 7 attack. 

At least 35,303 Palestinians have now been killed in the war, according to figures from the enclave's health ministry, while aid agencies have warned repeatedly of widespread hunger and the threat of disease.

Israel's military action has prompted protests around the world, but anti-Jewish feelings have also been on the rise. France, which has the largest Jewish and Muslim populations in western Europe, has recorded 366 antisemitic acts in the first three months of 2024, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said this month, three times as many as in the first quarter of last year.

"No one can deny this antisemitic wave. No one can deny the fact that it is estimated that French Jews represent 1 percent of the French population, but that more than 60 percent of anti-religious acts are antisemitic acts," he said.

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In Paris, Yonathan Arfi, head of the main French Jewish umbrella group, expressed fury at what he described as the "climate of terror" facing Jews in France. This week, a Paris memorial honoring people who distinguished themselves by helping to rescue Jews in France during the country's Nazi occupation in World War II was also attacked, defaced with painted blood-red hands.

"It's unbearable. It's more and more serious every day. After the antisemitic graffiti we saw in the past few days, antisemitic slogans, antisemitic insults, we now have attempts at setting synagogues on fire," said Arfi, president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France.

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