France President Meets Jewish Leaders After Blank Bullets Fired at Synagogue by Paris
Shots fired after Paris prosecutor announced the arrests of suspects in the recent bombing of a Jewish store; Hollande meeting with Jewish leaders.
French President Francois Hollande is meeting with leaders of the country's Jewish community Sunday after blank bullets were fired on a synagogue west of Paris, and amid renewed concerns about anti-Semitism in France.
A representative of the synagogue in the Paris suburb of Argenteuil says the building was targeted Saturday night and services were cancelled. The representative, who spoke on condition of anonymity because a police investigation is under way, said no one was hurt in the incident.
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According to the security unit of France’s Jewish communities, SPCJ, the shots were fired hours after the city’s chief prosecutor gave a news conference detailing the arrests of suspects in the recent bombing of a Jewish store.
Hollande is meeting Sunday with Jewish community leaders Richard Prasquier and Joel Mergui.
Police carried out raids across France on Saturday after DNA on a grenade that exploded last month at a kosher grocery store led them to a suspected jihadist cell of young Frenchmen recently converted to Islam.
One of the raids, in Strasbourg, ended in the fatal shooting of a suspect in his thirties after he opened fire on police.
At Argenteuil, police found nine blanks after members of the congregation reported the shooting to the police and SPCJ.
A representative of the synagogue in the Paris suburb of Argenteuil says the building was targeted Saturday night and services were cancelled. The representative, who spoke on condition of anonymity because a police investigation is under way, said no one was hurt in the incident.
French police have meanwhile arrested an eleventh man whom they say may have been connected to a domestic terrorist cell of alleged jihadists, suspected of involvement in the bombing of a kosher supermarket in Sarcelles, home to a large Jewish community that emigrated from North Africa in the 1960s, on Sept. 19.
Two men dressed in black were seen throwing an explosive device into the store. It produced a “weak explosion,” according to French police, in which one man sustained minor injuries.
Police are still searching for a twelfth suspect.
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