October 7, 2012

(JTA) — Unknown attackers shot blank bullets outside a synagogue near Paris.

The security unit of France’s Jewish communities, SPCJ, reported that the shots were fired on Oct. 5 at the synagogue at Argenteuil, a northwest suburb of Paris, hours after the city’s chief prosecutor gave a news conference detailing the arrests of suspects in the recent bombing of a Jewish store.

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.  

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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