A SUSPECTED terrorist accused of attacking a synagogue in France was tonight arrested following a gunfight with police.
The 33-year-old, who has not been named, was “severely wounded” before being taken into custody at the top of a council estate tower block in the city of Nimes on Saturday evening.
It was 30 miles away, in the southern seaside resort of La Grande-Motte, that the Algerian national is said to have caused an explosion in a parked car, and set fire to the doors of the Beth Yaacov synagogue.
CCTV images are said to show him at around 8.30am on Saturday with a Palestinian flag around his waist, while engaged in what President Emmanuel Macron called an “act of terrorism”.
A local municipal policeman in Nimes was ‘lightly wounded’ when the suspect opened fire before his ‘neutralisation and arrest’ by special forces, said an investigating source.
Those inside the synagogue fortunately remained unhurt.
Specialist anti-terrorism magistrates linked the attack to the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict, in which thousands have been killed.
Some 200 police officers were involved in a manhunt, and at around 11.30pm on Saturday, special forces from the RAID (Research, Assistance, Intervention, Deterrence) special forces moved in to the Nimes tower block.
French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin announced on X: “The alleged perpetrator of the arson attack on the synagogue has been arrested.
“Thanks to the police force, and mainly the RAID, who intervened with great professionalism despite the gunfire.”
A source involved in the operation confirmed that the suspect was “severely wounded” before being taken to a secure hospital.
There were no reports of any injuries among anyone else.
Stephan Rossignol, the Mayor of La Grande Motte, said CCTV had picked up images of an unidentified man setting fire to the cars outside the synagogue in La Grande Motte.
The potential suspect seen in the footage was said to be “brandishing a Palestinian flag”.
There were also claims from police sources that the man was armed with a pistol.
Yonathan Arfi, the president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF) meanwhile described the attack as “an attempt to kill Jews”.
He said a gas cylinder was detonated “in front of the synagogue of La Grande-Motte at the expected time of arrival of worshippers”.
The French government has regularly denounced an increase in anti-Semitic acts while Israel prosecutes its attacks on Gaza and the West Bank, in occupied Palestine.
More than 40,000 Palestinians, including thousands of women and children, have been killed, and many more wounded, since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, when some 1200 Israelis died.
Anti-Semitic acts in France have almost tripled since the beginning of the conflict, with ‘887 incidents’ recorded during the first half of this year, according to an Interior Ministry spokesman in Paris.
Hussein Bourgi, a Socialist Senator in the Herault department, where La Grande-Motte is situated, said: “I would like to express my full solidarity with the Jewish community of La Grande Motte.”
In May, an Algerian immigrant who was in France illegally was shot dead by police after throwing a Molotov Cocktail through a synagogue window.
The 29-year-old was hit four times by an officer who discharged his service revolver five times outside the building in Rouen, the capital of Normandy.
A judicial enquiry was opened into “arson with an anti-religious motivation’ and ‘intentional violence against persons holding public office,” and is ongoing.
A Holocaust memorial in Paris was defaced with red hands in an apparent reference to the rising civilian death toll in Gaza and the West Bank in May, and this was described as “outrageous” by Paris Mayor Ann Hidalgo.
