(JTA) — Police in Marseille, France, arrested a man brandishing a hunting rifle in front of a Jewish school who threatened to commit murder.
The man, who was not named, approached the Gan Ami school on the afternoon of Sept. 10 and shouted “I will kill all of you,” an unnamed police source told the Le Figaro daily. The man, 48, was drunk and was arrested soon after making the threats, according to the report.
He lived next to the school and was annoyed that a truck parked outside the school was blocking traffic and prompting drivers to sound their horns, the police source said. Parents were arriving to pick up students at the time.
The incident comes amid a dramatic increase in anti-Semitic attacks in 2014 compared to last year. In response, police have beefed up security at Jewish institutions, especially schools.
The tightened security is part of a heightened state of alert that began in 2012, when an Islamist murdered three children and a rabbi at a Jewish school in Toulouse.
SPCJ, the security unit of France’s Jewish communities, said the increase in anti-Semitic incidents this year owed to a proliferation of attacks on Jews over Israel’s summer conflict with Hamas in Gaza.
