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French acting Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said early Sunday that police had arrested one person after an explosion outside a synagogue in southern France.
Two doors of the La Grande Motte synagogue near Montpellier were set on fire on Saturday morning, as well as two cars in front of the building.
A gas cylinder exploded in one of the vehicles, injuring a police officer, but the five people in the synagogue were unharmed.
The suspect was arrested in the city of Nimes, about 40 kilometres from La Grande-Motte, BFM TV reported.
French President Emmanuel Macron described the attack as a “terrorist act” and stressed that a united France would fight it.
“The fight against anti-Semitism is an ongoing fight, a fight of a united nation,” Macron wrote on his Twitter page, adding that every effort would be made to find those responsible.
The incident is being investigated by the French anti-terrorism prosecutor's office.
Acting Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said about 200 police and gendarmerie officers had been deployed.
“We can assume that we have narrowly escaped an absolute tragedy,” Attal said.
Initial findings suggest the perpetrator was very determined. He said that if the synagogue had been full at the time of the crime and people had gone outside, there would have likely been deaths.
He described the act as outrageous, and pointed to the increasing number of anti-Semitic attacks in France.
Darmanin ordered an immediate increase in the presence of security forces outside Jewish places of worship. He wrote on the X website about an “apparently criminal arson attempt” and expressed his full support for the Jewish community.
Earlier in his article on the X website, Attal spoke of an anti-Semitic act: “Once again, our Jewish citizens have been targeted.”
Saturday is the Jewish Sabbath, the day on which people attend religious services.
The explosion occurred at a time when worshippers were expected to arrive at the synagogue, wrote Yonatan Arvi, president of the umbrella organization of Jewish organizations in France.
“It was not just an attack on a place of worship, it was an attempt to kill Jews,” he wrote.
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