Police officer injured in explosion outside synagogue in France

The country’s Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said the incident was “clearly criminal”

A police officer was injured when a car exploded outside the Beth Yaacov synagogue in the French town of La Grande-Motte on Saturday morning, police have confirmed.

Shortly before the blast, two vehicles had been set alight; one of them reportedly contained a gas canister.

“An attempted arson, clearly criminal, affected the synagogue in La Grande Motte this morning,” France’s Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, adding that all efforts are being made to locate the perpetrator.

The mayor of La Grande-Motte, Stephane Rossignol, said surveillance cameras had captured an individual setting fire to vehicles in front of the synagogue, according to French newspaper Le Figaro. 

A police source told the media the suspected perpetrator was seen leaving the area’s premises and was apparently wearing a traditional keffiyeh scarf and carrying a Palestinian flag. He remains at large.

Two doors of the religious building were damaged by the blaze, police told Le Figaro, adding that a team of bomb disposal experts has been deployed to the site.

Darmanin and French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal are expected to travel to the scene of the arson attack later in the day.

The wounded municipal police officer was rushed to the emergency room of Montpellier University Hospital, according to French media, with his injuries reportedly not being life-threatening.

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French authorities have ramped up security around synagogues, having reported a sharp increase in anti-Semitic incidents in France since 2023, after the attack on Israel by the Palestinian militant group Hamas in October prompted the Jewish state to launch a large-scale military campaign in Gaza. 

In May, a man was shot dead by French police after attempting to set fire to a synagogue in the city of Rouen.

Earlier in March, a 62-year-old man wearing traditional Jewish headwear was assaulted in Paris as he was leaving a synagogue. The attacker reportedly shouted ethnic slurs as he tackled the victim to the ground before fleeing the scene on foot.