Police in France shot an armed suspect dead Friday morning after he attempted to torch a synagogue, authorities said.
The attack unfolded in the northwestern city of Rouen. Responding officers “neutralized” the man who was “clearly wanting to set fire to the city’s synagogue,” Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin announced in a post on X. He also congratulated officers for their “responsiveness and courage.”
Rouen Mayor Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol said in his own post that there were “no victims other than the armed individual.”
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“Thoughts and full support to the Jewish Community of Rouen,” he added, later writing in a separate update that the whole city “is bruised and in shock.”
Speaking to reporters, Mayer-Rossignol said that the armed man “somehow climbed up the synagogue and threw an object, a sort of Molotov cocktail, into the main praying room,” according to Reuters.
National police officers were called to the scene over reports that smoke was billowing from the building. Upon arrival, they confronted the suspect who moved toward officers while holding a knife and a metal bar, according to the Associated Press. One of the officers then fatally shot the man, authorities said.
Natacha Ben Haïm, the head of Rouen’s Jewish community, said the walls and furniture inside the synagogue had been blackened by the flames. “I’m really upset, it’s catastrophic,” she said, the BBC reports.
The attack Friday comes just days after Rouen was rocked by a deadly ambush on a prison van at a toll booth south of the city. Two prison officers were killed when several armed gunmen attacked the van and freed inmate Mohamed Amra—known as “The Fly”—before making their escape.
