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.

The authorities in France have raised the alarm about a surge of antisemitic incidents across the country 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.

Firefighters and police officers quickly arrived at the scene, Mr. Mayer-Rossignol said. The man came down from the first floor and threw a metal bar at the officers and attacked them with a knife. The officers shot back in response, killing the man, Mr. Mayer-Rossignol said.

Gérald Darmanin, France’s interior minister, said in a social media post that police officers had “neutralized” an “armed individual who evidently wanted to set fire to the city’s synagogue.”

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.

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.