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| By: Associated Press |
| Published: November 9, 2006 |
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Arsonists set fire Thursday to a Jewish school north of Paris that had been badly damaged in another arson attack in 2003, police said. No one was injured.
The overnight fire, which targeted a ground floor office at the Merkaz Hatorah school in suburban Gagny, was quickly extinguished, police said. Two other small fires were set nearby.
Police opened an investigation. CRIF, an umbrella group of France's Jewish organizations, asked investigators to shed all possible light on the case.
A November 2003 fire at Merkaz Hatorah destroyed around 32,300 square feet of the school. At the time, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said the arson attack had "an anti-Semitic and obviously racist connotation."
The attack galvanized French leaders' response to anti-Semitic attacks. Days afterward, President Jacques Chirac announced a tougher policy to combat anti-Semitism, saying that an attack on a Jew is an attack on the entire nation.
France has Europe's largest Jewish community -- and, with an estimated 5 million Muslims, Europe's largest Muslim community, too. Anti-Semitic acts increased in France starting in 2000, reflecting the rise in Israeli-Palestinian violence. In recent years the number has been decreasing. |
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