French police fatally shoot a man suspected of setting fire to a synagogue

File photo of french police car (AFP)
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Updated 17 May 2024
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French police fatally shoot a man suspected of setting fire to a synagogue

  • The incident occurred early on Friday morning

ROUEN: France’s Interior Minister said Friday that a man who was shot and killed by police after a suspected arson attack on a synagogue in the Normandy city of Rouen was an Algerian national who’d sought medical treatment in France and wasn’t flagged as a suspected extremist.

The minister, Gerald Darmanin, 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 faced with the suspected attacker who rushed at him with a kitchen knife early Friday after the blaze broke out at the synagogue.

Fire services were alerted early Friday morning to a blaze at the synagogue. Police officers who deployed discovered the man on the roof of the building, clutching the metal bar in one hand and the kitchen knife in the other, and smoke rising from the synagogue’s windows, Rouen prosecutor Frédéric Teillet said at a brief news conference.

He said the man hurled abuse and threw the metal bar at the police before jumping off the roof and then running at one of the officers with his knife raised.

The officer fired five shots, hitting the man four times, fatally wounding him, the prosecutor said. He said authorities are seeking to verify the man’s identity. The prosecutor took no questions.

Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin posted on the social media site X that the man was “clearly wanting to set fire to the city’s synagogue.”

He congratulated officers for “their reactivity and their courage.”

Tensions and anger have grown in France over the Israel-Hamas war. Antisemitic acts have surged in the country, which has the largest Jewish and Muslim populations in western Europe.

Rouen Mayor Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol said the man is thought to have climbed onto a trash container and thrown “a sort of Molotov cocktail” inside the synagogue, starting a fire and causing “significant damage.”

“When the Jewish community is attacked, it’s an attack on the national community, an attack on France, an attack on all French citizens,” he said.

“It’s a fright for the whole nation,” he added.

Photos taken inside the synagogue and seen by The Associated Press showed that walls and the ceiling were charred and blackened.

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,” Arfi, president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France, told the AP.

“Everyone is wondering whether they can live a peaceful life in France as a Jew,” he added. “There’s a climate of fear because it feels like, anywhere in our country and at any time, an antisemitic attack can take place. It aims at intimidating French Jews and we won’t accept this intimidation. We refuse it, and we will continue to fight against this unbridled antisemitism.”

French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said this month that the sharp spike in antisemitic acts in France that followed the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel has continued into this year.

Authorities registered 366 antisemitic acts in the first three months of 2024, a 300 percent increase over the same period last year, Attal said. More than 1,200 antisemitic acts were reported in the last three months of 2023 — which was three times more than in the whole of 2022, he said.

“We are witnessing an explosion of hatred,” he said.


Canada and China agree to ‘regularize communications’

Updated 4 sec ago
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Canada and China agree to ‘regularize communications’

MONTREAL: Canada and China have agreed to regularize channels of communication, the office of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said Thursday, after a period of strained diplomatic relations between the two countries.
“Mark Carney, spoke with the Premier of China, Li Qiang. The leaders exchanged views on bilateral relations, including the importance of engagement, and agreed to regularize channels of communication between Canada and China,” it said in a statement.
They also discussed trade and “committed their governments to working together to address the fentanyl crisis.”
Ties between Beijing and Ottawa have been tense in recent years following the arrest of a senior Chinese telecom executive on a US warrant in 2018.
Li told Carney that “in recent years, China-Canada relations have faced unnecessary disturbances and encountered serious difficulties,” Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported.
He added that China is “willing to work with Canada to jointly uphold multilateralism and free trade” in the face of growing unilateralism and protectionism, Xinhua reported, noting that the call came at Carney’s request.
Both countries have been targeted by US President Donald Trump’s tariff hikes and have condemned them.

UN rights chief demands US withdraw sanctions on ICC judges

Updated 23 min 20 sec ago
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UN rights chief demands US withdraw sanctions on ICC judges

  • Volker Turk: ‘I call for the prompt reconsideration and withdrawal of these latest measures’
GENEVA: The United Nations human rights chief on Friday demanded the United States lift sanctions it imposed on four International Criminal Court judges, saying they were contrary to the rule of law.
“I call for the prompt reconsideration and withdrawal of these latest measures,” Volker Turk said in a statement to media. “Attacks against judges for performance of their judicial functions, at national or international levels, run directly counter to respect for the rule of law and the equal protection of the law – values for which the US has long stood.”

Lufthansa to restart Tel Aviv flights on June 23

Updated 30 min 8 sec ago
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Lufthansa to restart Tel Aviv flights on June 23

  • Lufthansa suspended its flights to Israel’s main airport following a May 4 rocket attack launched by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, and extended the suspension several times since

BERLIN: Germany’s Lufthansa airline group said Friday it would restart flights to and from Tel Aviv on June 23, having suspended them early last month amid the ongoing regional conflict.

The group said in a statement that the decision would affect Lufthansa, Austrian, SWISS, Brussels Airlines Eurowings, ITA and Lufthansa Cargo but that “for operational reasons,” the individual airlines would only resume services “gradually.”

“The decision is based on an extensive security analysis and in coordination with the relevant authorities,” it added.

The group suspended its flights to Israel’s main airport following a May 4 rocket attack launched by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, and extended the suspension several times since.

The missile landed near a car park at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport and injured six people, the first time a missile had penetrated the airport perimeter.

The Houthis have repeatedly launched missiles and drones at Israel since the war in Gaza began in October 2023 with Palestinian militant group Hamas’s attack on Israel.

The Iran-backed Houthis, who say they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians, paused their attacks during a two-month Gaza ceasefire that ended in March, but began again after Israel resumed its military campaign in the territory.

The Israeli army has reported several such launches in recent days, with most of the projectiles being intercepted.


Japan allows longer nuclear plant lifespans

Updated 40 min 5 sec ago
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Japan allows longer nuclear plant lifespans

  • The world’s fourth-largest economy is targeting carbon neutrality by 2050 but remains heavily reliant on fossil fuels
  • Many of the country’s nuclear reactors were taken offline after the 2011 Fukushima meltdown

TOKYO: A law allowing nuclear reactors to operate beyond 60 years took effect in Japan on Friday, as the government turns back to atomic energy 14 years after the Fukushima catastrophe.

The world’s fourth-largest economy is targeting carbon neutrality by 2050 but remains heavily reliant on fossil fuels – partly because many nuclear reactors were taken offline after the 2011 Fukushima meltdown.

The government now plans to increase its reliance on nuclear power, in part to help meet growing energy demand from artificial intelligence and microchip factories.

The 60-year limit was brought in after the 2011 disaster, which was triggered by a devastating earthquake and tsunami in northeast Japan.

Under the amended law, nuclear plants’ operating period may be extended beyond 60 years – in a system similar to extra time in football games – to compensate for stoppages caused by “unforeseeable circumstances,” the government says.

This means, for example, that one reactor in central Japan’s Fukui region, suspended for 12 years after the Fukushima crisis, will now be able to operate up until 2047 – 72 years after its debut, the Asahi Shimbun daily reported.

But operators require approval from Japan’s nuclear safety watchdog for the exemption. The law also includes measures intended to strengthen safety checks at aging reactors.

The legal revision is also aimed at helping Japan better cope with power crunches, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sparked energy market turmoil.

Japan’s Strategic Energy Plan had previously vowed to “reduce reliance on nuclear power as much as possible.”

But this pledge was dropped from the latest version approved in February, which includes an intention to make renewables the country’s top power source by 2040.

Under the plan, nuclear power will account for around 20 percent of Japan’s energy supply by 2040 – up from 5.6 percent in 2022.

Also in February, Japan pledged to slash greenhouse gas emissions by 60 percent in the next decade from 2013 levels, a target decried by campaigners as far short of what was needed under the Paris Agreement to limit global warming.

Japan is the world’s fifth largest single-country emitter of carbon dioxide after China, the United States, India and Russia.


Three Serbs charged over paint attack on France Jewish sites

Updated 47 min 16 sec ago
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Three Serbs charged over paint attack on France Jewish sites

  • France’s Holocaust memorial, three Paris synagogues and a restaurant were vandalized with paint in the night of Friday to Saturday

PARIS: A French judge has charged three Serbs with vandalizing Jewish sites with paint at the weekend “to serve the interests of a foreign power,” a judicial source said Friday.

A source close to the case said investigators suspect Russia is behind the attacks for which the men were charged on Thursday evening.

They had exchanged messages on Telegram with other individuals not yet apprehended, it added.

France’s Holocaust memorial, three Paris synagogues and a restaurant were vandalized with paint in the night of Friday to Saturday, in what the Israeli embassy denounced as a “coordinated anti-Semitic attack.”

The source following the case described the three suspects, two born in 1995 and one born in 2003, as having completed a task motivated by financial compensation, but without being aware of any geopolitical implications.

They were two brothers and a third person who had lived in France for several years, the source said.

They were arrested on Monday in southeast France as they tried to leave the country.

French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said he was “deeply disgusted by these heinous acts targeting the Jewish community.”

Israeli’s President Isaac Herzog said Saturday he was “dismayed” by the Paris vandalism, noting that his great-grandfather had been a rabbi at one of the synagogues.

In the run-up to the Summer Olympics in Paris last year, several high-profile stunts intended to influence French public opinion led French officials to point the finger at Moscow.

They included red hands tagged on Paris’s main Holocaust memorial in May 2024.

In October 2023, soon after the Palestinian militant attack on Israel that sparked the latest Gaza war, stars of David were tagged on buildings in the Paris region, with two Moldovans suspected of working for the Russian FSB security service later arrested.

Russia has previously denied any involvement in any of the plots attributed to it by French officials.