Police have arrested one person after an explosion outside a synagogue in southern France, acting Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said Sunday morning.
On Saturday morning, two doors of the synagogue in La Grande-Motte, near Montpellier, were set on fire, as well as two vehicles parked in front of the building.
A gas cylinder exploded in one of the vehicles. A police officer was injured. The five people who were in the synagogue at the time were unharmed.
According to broadcaster BFMTV, the suspect was arrested in Nîmes, about 40 kilometers from La Grande-Motte.
French President Emmanuel Macron called the attack “an act of terrorism” that a united France would fight against.
“The fight against anti-Semitism is an ongoing fight, the fight of a united nation,” Macron wrote on X, adding that everything would be done to find those responsible.
The incident is being investigated by the French counter-terrorism prosecutor’s office.
According to acting Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, some 200 police officers and gendarmes have been deployed.
“We can assume that we narrowly escaped an outright tragedy,” Attal said.
Initial findings indicate that the perpetrator was very determined. If the synagogue had been full at the time of the crime and people had come out, there would probably have been deaths, he said.
He called the act scandalous and pointed to the increasing number of anti-Semitic attacks in France.
Darmanin ordered an immediate increase in the presence of security forces outside Jewish places of worship. He wrote on X about an “apparently criminal attempt at arson” and expressed his full support for the Jewish community.
Attal previously spoke in X of an anti-Semitic act: “Our Jewish fellow citizens are once again the target.”
Saturday is the Jewish Sabbath and traditionally the day when people attend religious services.
Yonathan Arfi, president of the umbrella organization of Jewish organizations in France, CRIF, wrote that the explosion occurred at a time when worshipers were expected to arrive at the synagogue.
“It was not just an attack on a house of worship, it was an attempt to kill Jews,” he wrote.
