French Police Shoot Dead Man Who Tried to Set Synagogue on Fire

The police shot and killed a man in northern France on Friday after he tried to set fire to a synagogue in the city of Rouen and attacked officers who tried to stop him, the French authorities said.

Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol, the mayor of Rouen, a city of about 110,000 people, told reporters that firefighters had brought the outbreak of flames under control and that no one other than the assailant had been harmed.

The identity and motives of the man who attacked the synagogue were not immediately clear, but the French authorities were treating it as an antisemitic act. Local prosecutors have opened an investigation into “religiously motivated arson” and assault.

The authorities in France have raised the alarm about a surge of antisemitic incidents across the country in recent months, against the backdrop of the war in Gaza. Mr. Mayer-Rossignol said that the episode was still being investigated but that “in all likelihood it is a deeply antisemitic act.”

Anyone who attacks the Jewish community, he added, “is attacking all of France.”

Mr. Mayer-Rossignol said that the police’s initial findings were that the man broke into the synagogue by climbing atop a trash can around 6:30 a.m. He reached the first floor and threw an “incendiary element” inside, starting a fire that caused “significant damage” but did not harm anyone, Mr. Mayer-Rossignol said.

The synagogue is in the historical center of Rouen, a short walk from the city’s famed cathedral.

“The fire caused a lot of damage,” Natacha Ben Haïm, head of the local Jewish community association, told reporters, adding that furniture had burned, walls had been blackened and parts of the roof had fallen down. “It’s terrible,” she said.

Frédéric Teillet, the top prosecutor in Rouen, said at a news conference that firefighters and police officers who quickly arrived at the scene saw smoke coming out of synagogue windows and a man on the roof with a kitchen knife in one hand and a metal chisel in the other.

The man shouted at the officers, threw the chisel at them, jumped down from the roof and then brandished the knife as he ran at one of the officers, ignoring orders to stop, Mr. Teillet said.

The officer fired five shots, four of which hit the man, Mr. Teillet said.

Mr. Teillet said that the man had been carrying a local public transportation pass with a name on it but that investigators were still verifying his identity.

France is on high alert over the risk of terrorist attacks and other potential security threats, especially in the run-up to the Summer Olympics in Paris, which are set to start in July.

The country was scarred by large-scale Islamist terrorist attacks in 2015 and 2016, and a string of smaller but still deadly shootings and stabbings in subsequent years have ensured that security and intelligence forces remain on edge.

France is currently at its highest terror alert level, which was raised in March after a deadly attack on a Moscow concert hall that was claimed by the Islamic State.

The war in Gaza and heightened tensions between Israel and Iran have also kept the authorities worried about potential repercussions in France, which is home to some of Europe’s largest Jewish and Muslim populations.

In April, after Iran launched airstrikes against Israel, Mr. Darmanin ordered increased security at synagogues and at Jewish schools around France.

Gabriel Attal, the French prime minister, said this month that more than 360 antisemitic incidents — including threats, assaults and other acts — had been recorded in France in the first three months of 2024, up 300 percent from the previous year.

After the attack in Rouen, Yonathan Arfi, head of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France, said in a social media post, “Setting fire to a synagogue is an attempt to intimidate all Jews.”

The attack and shooting in Rouen came days after a Holocaust memorial was vandalized in Paris. The memorial, a wall of names that honors those who helped rescue Jews in France during World War II, was defaced with graffiti of red hands.

Chmouel Lubecki, rabbi at the synagogue in Rouen, told the news channel BFMTV that he had had no knowledge of specific threats against the synagogue, but he lamented a climate of “tensions” and said that the fire did not surprise him.

“We had this fear inside of us, but when it happens it’s still shocking,” Rabbi Lubecki said. He urged the Jewish community to light candles for Shabbat on Friday “to show that we aren’t afraid and that we are continuing to practice our Judaism despite the circumstances.”