Assailants topple 30 tombstones, scrawl swastikas at Muslim cemetery in northeast France
News Agencies – September 24, 2010
Unidentified assailants have toppled about 30 tombstones and scrawled swastikas into the ground at a Muslim cemetery plot in Strasbourg, in northeastern France. Mayor Roland Ries has denounced the desecration of the Muslim section of a cemetery in the city of Strasbourg as “an unbearable racist act.”
An umbrella group of French Muslim organizations, the CFCM (French Council of Muslim Faith) expressed its “indignation” about the vandalism overnight Thursday to Friday and called on authorities to track down and punish the attackers. France is home to Western Europe’s largest Jewish and Muslim populations, and there are occasional attacks on their schools, cemeteries or places of worship. Many go unsolved and unprosecuted.