Two cars exploded outside a synagogue in southern France early Saturday, injuring one police officer and prompting authorities to open a terrorism investigation amid reports of rising antisemitism in the country.
The vehicles, parked outside the Beth Yaacov synagogue in the town of La Grande-Motte, near Montpellier, were set alight around 8 a.m., the Associated Press reported, citing a statement from the National Anti-terrorism Prosecutor’s Office.
The attack is being investigated as an attempted murder, the statement said. French President Emmanuel Macron called it a “terrorist act” and said everything was being done to locate the perpetrator. “The fight against antisemitism is a constant fight,” he said.
Two other fires were started outside the doors to the synagogue, the statement from the prosecutor’s office said. As of Saturday evening local time, no arrests had been made.
Four people and a rabbi were present at the time of the attack but were not harmed, officials said, though a police officer was injured after a propane gas tank inside one the cars detonated.
Prime Minister Gabriel Attal visited the scene Saturday alongside Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin and met with local staff and officials.
“Once again, French Jews have been targeted and attacked because of their beliefs,” Attal said, adding that he and Darmanin were “outraged and repulsed” by the attack.
The suspect, Attal said, was “extremely determined” to cause harm. If the synagogue had been full of worshipers at the time of the attack, there would have very likely been victims, he said.
“We have narrowly avoided a tragedy,” Attal said, adding that around 200 police officers and security personnel were working to find the perpetrator.
The mayor of La Grande-Motte, Stephan Rossignol, said security cameras had captured images of an individual setting fire to the cars, French wire service Agence France-Presse reported.
Yonathan Arfi, president of the Council of Jewish Institutions in France, told AFP that the attack was “an attempt to kill Jews” and said he welcomed the government’s vow to protect Jewish holy sites in the country so that “the Jews of France can live peacefully like all other French people.”
Antisemitism has skyrocketed in France, home to the third-largest Jewish community in the world, after Israel and the United States. In November, some 100,000 people marched through Paris to protest antisemitism in the country following Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack and Israel’s war in Gaza.
The Interior Ministry recorded 1,676 antisemitic attacks in 2023, up from 436 in 2022.
In recent months, French Jews have expressed concern for their safety.
In May, a man armed with a knife set fire to a synagogue in the northwestern city of Rouen. He was shot dead by police after threatening officers, the local prosecutor said.
In June, the reported rape of a 12-year-old Jewish girl in Paris was linked to rising antisemitism across the country. “No one can be excused from this unprecedented surge of antisemitism,” the chief rabbi of France, Haïm Korsia, said in a social media post at the time.
