Paris -
Hundreds of Jewish graves at a cemetery in eastern France have been desecrated, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said on Sunday in Paris.
The incident in the Sarre-Union municipality follow the deadly January 9 terrorist attack on a kosher supermarket in Paris by Islamist militants, and comes amid a wave of anti-Semitic incidents and a surge in Jewish emigration from France.
Neither violence nor religious intolerance would “destroy our will to live together in freedom,” said Cazeneuve, who also offered his condolences to the victims of a terrorist attack in Copenhagen whose targets included a synagogue.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls declared the damage to the cemetery an anti-Semitic act and vowed the government would do all it could to hold those responsible to account.
It was the third time the cemetery in Sarre-Union in the Alsace region had been desecrated. In 1988, 60 grave stones were overturned and in 2001 more than 50 graves were damaged.
Sapa-dpa