A fire destroyed a large synagogue in Geneva on Thursday, and local police said they suspected arson.

There were no injuries, a police spokesman said.

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"Due to the extent of the fire that the firemen encountered when they arrived to intervene, we tend to think that it was a deliberate act," spokesman Philippe Cosandey said by telephone.

"That is the hypothesis that the police technical teams are pursuing now," he added.

Cosandey said it was too early to determine whether the attack could have been racially motivated, and police had not alerted the local community about the possibility of further danger.

Firefighting authorities were alerted at 5:18 A.M. Swiss time and arrived to find the entire synagogue in flames.

The fire was under control by 6:15 local time, according to the Swiss news agency ATS.

The synagogue was built in the early 1970s in the Malagnou suburb of Geneva and has played host to a youth and sports club as well as conferences and receptions.

City authorities were attempting to recover religious artefacts from the ruins of the fire, ATS said.


Recent anti-Semitic incidents in Europe:
April 1, 2007 - About 50 gravestones are found smashed in the Jewish section of a cemetery in the northern French city of Lille ahead of the Passover holiday.

-Feb. 18, 2007 - A monument to Holocaust victims is defaced and Jewish graves are daubed with swastikas in the Ukrainian Black Sea port of Odessa.

-Feb. 5, 2007 - A memorial to Jewish victims of a 1945 death march is vandalized in the northern Czech town of Ceska Lipa.

-Nov. 30, 2006 - A group of orthodox Jewish teenagers on a school trip in the northeastern Belgian town of Beringen is attacked by another group of teenagers and abused with anti-Semitic slogans.

-Oct. 25, 2006 - A wall next to the Jewish synagogue in Naples, Italy, is defaced with four swastikas and other anti-Semitic graffiti.

- Sept. 17, 2006 - An unknown attacker fires dozens of shots at Norway's main Jewish synagogue in Oslo. Nobody is injured.

- Aug. 29, 2006 - Two Israeli citizens are severely beaten by a group of skinheads in a park in the Serbian capital, Belgrade.