PARIS: Muslim places of worship in two French towns were fired upon on Wednesday night, leaving no casualties, prosecutors said on Thursday.
Three blank grenades were thrown at a mosque shortly after midnight in the city of Le Mans, west of Paris. A bullet hole was also found in a window of the mosque.
In the Port-la-Nouvelle district near Narbonne in southern France, several shots were fired in the direction of a Muslim prayer hall shortly after evening prayers. The hall was empty, the local prosecutor said.
An explosion at a kebab shop near a mosque in the eastern French town of Villefranche-sur-Saone on Thursday morning also left no casualties. Local prosecutors have described it as a “criminal act”.
France is on edge following the deadly assault by heavily armed gunmen on satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday that left 12 dead. No link has yet been established between the attacks.
French Islamic groups urge Muslims to condemn terrorism
France’s main Islamic groups urged Muslims across the country to observe a minute of silence on Thursday and for imams to condemn terrorism in the wake of the massacre at the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine.
The groups called on “Muslim citizens of France to observe a minute of silence today at midday (1100 GMT), along with the rest of the nation, in memory of the victims of terrorism.”
In Paris attack, clash on whether to limit press freedom
Two sides in conflict over whether there should be limits to the liberty of self-expression clashed violently in a usually tranquil side street on the Right Bank of Paris.
When it was over, a dozen people lay dead - including some of the most prominent political cartoonists and satirists in France, and the police officers assigned to protect them.
Wednesday’s attack at the offices of the newspaper Charlie Hebdo seems the latest chapter in a clash of values.
In France, the conflict over what limits to place on press freedom has often involved the satirical weekly, whose mix of crude, often obscene artwork and brashness has few if any parallels in Anglo-Saxon media.
Press freedom and the right to self-expression in general differs vastly in the world, with even a generally liberal country like Sweden passing laws that criminalize hate speech and prohibiting expressions of contempt directed against a group or one of its members.
