Three arrests have been made by the police in France so far, for the fire and explosion in a car that occurred yesterday morning, outside a synagogue in the southern part of the country, with an injured police officer.

According to Interior Minister Gérald Dermanen, the main suspect in the attack was arrested by a special operations unit of the French police and after an exchange of fire, while two people close to him have also been detained.

According to the anti-terrorist directorate of the French national prosecution (PNAT), the arrest took place at around 23:30 local time, 00:30 Greek time, in Nîmes, about 40 kilometers north of La Grand Motte. The suspect “opened fire” against a group of the elite unit, members of which “retaliated” as a result of which the man was wounded in the face.

The timeline of the attack

At least two vehicles, one of which contained a gas cylinder that exploded, were set on fire yesterday after 08:00 (local time; 09:00 Greek time) in front of a Jewish place of worship in La Grand Motte, injuring a local police officer who had gone to the scene, after being called by residents.

“Inside the synagogue there were five people, among them the rabbi”, however, none of them were injured, explained the PNAT (parquet national antiterroriste, the anti-terrorist department of the French National Prosecutor’s Office), which undertook to carry out the investigation.

CCTV footage, verified by AFP, shows a man with his face covered, a Palestinian flag draped across his waist, and what appears to be a pistol in his waistband. She wears a red Palestinian headscarf and holds a plastic bottle of yellowish liquid in each hand.

According to sources close to the investigation, after setting fire he ran away.

“The fight against anti-Semitism is a continuous battle of the united (French) nation,” commented President Macron.

France was saved from an “absolute tragedy”, said Prime Minister Gabriel Atal, who traveled to La Grand Motte as the country prepares to host the Paralympic Games from Wednesday.

“The first evidence, mainly from the surveillance circuit, shows that the perpetrator was extremely determined and if the synagogue was full of believers (…) we would probably have had victims”, he explained.

“Once again, French Jews were targeted, attacked because of their faith,” Mr. Atal continued. “This outrages all of us, infuriates all of us, infuriates all of us,” he insisted, citing the “climate fueled by some” since October 7, when the Israel-Hamas war broke out in the Gaza Strip, prompting its unprecedented raid military arm of the Palestinian Islamist movement in southern sectors of Israeli territory.

France’s government has often complained of a surge in anti-Semitic violence in the country, home to Europe’s largest Jewish community, since the devastating war broke out in the Palestinian enclave.

The attack on the Beth Yaakov synagogue took place on Saturday, a weekly holiday for Jewish believers. However, it was not a day of any special celebration.

“We could have (the synagogue) too many people,” as Jewish holidaymakers in seaside La Grand Motte go to pray there, stressed Perla Dana, president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions (CRIF) in the Occitania prefecture. The city, which has a population of about 8,500 in the winter, hosts almost ten times as many people in the summer.

National CRIF president Yonatan Arfi strongly condemned the “attempt to murder Jews”.

The attack provoked strong reactions in the country, which remains in political turmoil as day-to-day affairs have been handled by Mr Macron’s resigned government for the past six weeks, with the head of state under widespread pressure to name a new prime minister.

The head of the National Alarm (far right) Marine Le Pen described the “rise of anti-Semitism”.

The leader of Insubordinate France (LFI, radical left) Jean-Luc Mélenchon, whose movement has been accused by opponents of fueling anti-Semitic hatred, denounced the “unacceptable crime”.

Anti-Semitic acts have almost tripled this year, with “887” recorded in the first half of the year, the French Interior Ministry said on August 9, compared to 304 in the same period last year.

They had already risen sharply last year, particularly after October 7, reaching 1,676, which was “quadrupled from 2022”.