A synagogue in a Paris suburb has been ransacked in what Jewish leaders said yesterday was the first such anti-Semitic attack in France since the end of the Iraq war.
Prayer books were found thrown onto the floor, the Torah scrolls - sacred to Jews - opened, and cash stolen after the break-in last Friday night at the synagogue, its administrator, Mr Jean-Claude Myara said.
Written on an outside wall was "Juif=mort" \. "This is a violation of our integrity. We feel like we've been raped," said the administrator of the Ohr Menahem synagogue, which also serves as a community centre in the northern Paris suburb of Saint-Denis.
Worshippers at the synagogue, which is in an area heavily populated by north African immigrants, fear the incident could be followed by further such attacks, Mr Myara said.
"Our fear is that this could happen again," he said. "We worry this was just a first visit." The incident was the first such attack on a synagogue in France since the war in Iraq, said Mr Ariel Goldmann, spokesman for the Service for the Protection of the Jewish Community.
Officials had expected more tensions between Jews and Muslim youths, but said Paris's criticism of the US-led war apparently defused some of it.
In the year running up to the Iraq war, police reported a clear rise in anti-Semitic attacks in France and attributed most of them to Muslim youths of north African origin. - (Reuters)