French police shot dead a knife-wielding man who set fire to a synagogue and threatened police in the city of Rouen in the latest anti-semitic attack to take place in the country, officials said.
"An armed man somehow climbed up the synagogue and threw an object, a sort of Molotov cocktail, into the main praying room," mayor Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol said, adding that nobody else was harmed in the city located in the northwestern Normandy region.
Police found the man on the synagogue roof with an iron bar and kitchen knife, shooting him when he defied orders to stop.
The man was of Algerian origin, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin told reporters.
"The person who set fire to the synagogue in Rouen was not French, he was of Algerian origin," Mr Darmanin said, as he held a news conference in Rouen.
Mr Darmanin said the attacker's bid for a residency permit had been recently rejected.
He was otherwise not on the radar of police or intelligence services, he added.
"This anti-semitic act affects us all deeply," Mr Darmanin said after visiting the synagogue, adding that France was doing all it could to protect its Jewish community.
The synagogue suffered extensive damage from the fire, but no one else was harmed, said Mr 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.
France, like many countries across Europe, has seen an increase in anti-semitic acts since Hamas' 7 October attack on Israel and the Israeli military response in Gaza.
The synagogue's rabbi, Chmouel Lubecki, said his wife was there at the time of the attack.
"We had a great fright," he told BFM TV.
His wife "heard gunshots and screams ... and then she saw smoke coming from the synagogue, so she immediately went down, she helped the firefighters get in the synagogue," he said.
"We expected it (attacks), unfortunately," he said, because of a rise in antisemitism.
"We had this fear inside of us, but when it actually happens, it's still shocking," he added.
Natacha Ben Haim, president of Normandy's Jewish community said the walls and a lot of the furniture, had been blackened by the fire and smoke.
"It's catastrophic. Yes, I'm upset, I'm very upset," she told reporters.
France hosts the Olympic Summer Games in just over two months and recently raised its alert status to the highest level against a complex geopolitical backdrop in the Middle East and Europe's eastern flank.
"Arriving on site (at the synagogue), firefighters and police spotted a man on the roof of the synagogue, he was brandishing an iron bar in one hand and a kitchen knife in the other," prosecutor Frederic Teillet told reporters, adding that there was smoke coming out of the synagogue's windows.
A police officer shot the attacker as he ran towards him, threatening him with the knife he held in his hand, and did not follow orders to stop, Mr Teillet said.
The officer seemed to have acted according to normal procedure in such a situation, he said.
Two separate investigations have been opened, one into the fire at the synagogue and another into the circumstances of the death of the individual killed by the police, Rouen prosecutors said.
Such an investigation by France's police inspectorate general is automatic whenever an individual is killed by the police.
The synagogue was later blocked off by police officers as evidence was collected.
Mayor Mayer-Rossignol said it was surrounded by a series of security cameras.
"No one can deny this anti-semitic wave. No one can deny the fact that it is estimated that French Jews represent 1% of the French population, but that more than 60% of anti-religious acts are anti-semitic acts," he said.
France has the largest Jewish community of any country after Israel and the United States, as well as Europe's largest Muslim community.
It has recorded 366 anti-semitic 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.
Red hand graffiti painted onto France's Holocaust Memorial earlier this week prompted anger including from President Emmanuel Macron who condemned "odious anti-Semitism".
In 2016, Rouen was home to an attack later claimed by the Islamic State, when a priest was killed with a knife during service in town of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray in Rouen's outskirts.
Rabbi Lubecki urged the community to carry on as usual.
"Tonight is Shabbat (Sabbath). It is important to light the Shabbat candles to show that we are not afraid and that we continue to practice our Judaism despite the circumstances," he said.
