A small package bomb exploded inside a kosher supermarket in Sarcelles, a Paris suburb, on Wednesday, one day after Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, wounding at least one person.
The Jewish Community Protection Service (SPCJ) said two individuals dressed in black threw an explosive device inside the Naouri Market store at lunchtime.
Sometimes called “Little Jerusalem,” Sarcelles, located north of Paris, is home to a large Jewish community.
According to Sammy Ghozlan, president of the National Bureau of Vigilance against anti-Semitic acts (BNVCA), a group monitoring anti-Semitic attacks in France, said the two assailants had their faces covered.
One person suffered small injuries, it said.
Motives for attack were not immediately clear. It came a few hours after a satirical French weekly published caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, prompting anger from French Muslim groups.
Yves Jannier, the state prosecutor in the Val d’Oise region where Sarcelles is located, cautioned that evidence was still being compiled and it was too early to draw any conclusions about motives behind the attack.
“We’ll need to analyze, quantify and measure all these elements, such as to know perhaps the type of explosives used,” he said at a news conference. “But for now, we should avoid any extrapolation or hasty conclusions.”
In a statement, CRIF, the umbrella group of French Jewish organizations, said that “it fears this attack” is connected to violent protests in recent days from Asia to Africa against the U.S.-produced film “Innocence of Muslims,” which ridicules Prophet Muhammad.
CRIF criticized those who are linking Jews to the making of the film and said “nothing can justify the wave of violence that has hit the world since its release.”
Israel’ambassador in France Yossi Gal, condemned the "anti-Semitic attack," stressing that "no reason or excuse can justify the targeting of innocent people."
Fears of a new wave of anti-Semitism in France resurfaced earlier this year after a radical Islamist gunman claiming ties to al-Qaeda killed three children and a rabbi at a Jewish school in Toulouse in March, the worst such attacks in France since the 1990s.
France has western Europe’s largest Jewish population. Some 600,000 Jews live in the country.
The Protection Service of the Jewish community said that the situation "forced us to raise the level of protection of our community and vigilance around synagogues, Jewish schools and community centers or places, especially in this period of Jewish holidays."

by: Joseph Byron

EJP