Police in northern France shot an armed 24-year-old Algerian migrant shortly after he allegedly committed an arson attack on a synagogue in Rouen on Friday.
While responding to the fire, first responders found the unnamed suspect standing on the roof of the building, holding a metal pry bar and a knife, as smoke was seen coming from the house of worship’s windows.
The individual was then said to have charged one of the attending officers before he was shot several times.
"An armed man somehow climbed up the synagogue and threw an object, a sort of Molotov cocktail, into the main praying room," the city’s mayor, Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol, told reporters after the incident.
The synagogue’s rabbi, Chmouel Lubecki, said that while the Torah scrolls survived the event, "the damage is considerable."
The French Interior Ministry disclosed that the perpetrator had no known connections to terrorist groups but had ignored a recent deportation order and was living in the country illegally.
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