France Witnesses Two More Terror Attacks
Just a day after gunmen attacked the headquarters of the satirical French Magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris, leaving 12 people dead and 10 injured, an explosion was reported at a kebab shop near a mosque in eastern French town of Villefranche-sur-Saone.
AFP news agency reported several attacks against French mosques since the killing of the journalists in a daring gun attack by al-Qaeda-affiliated militants.
It has been reported that as many as three blank grenades were thrown at a mosque just after midnight local time in the city of Le Mans, west of Paris. There are also reports from Port-la-Nouvelle district near Narbonne in southern France that shots were fired in the direction of a Muslim prayer hall shortly after evening prayers.
"It is a criminal act," a local official told AFP referring to the explosion near the mosque on Thursday.
The Paris shooting that took place Wednesday comes at a time when anti-Islamic movements are going on in full-swing in Europe, especially in neighbouring Germany where thousands have taken to the streets to protest against the "Islamization" of Europe.
"Any incident like the one in Paris will only be fuel to the fire," Bloomberg quoted Joerg Forbrig, the senior programme director at the German Marshall Fund of the United States as saying. "It will [be] welcomed as a 'told-you-so' episode by radical movements saying Islam is a threat to our countries."
Shada Islam, director of policy at the Friends of Europe advisory group in Brussels, said: "Europe is in the grip of so much tension over the question of Islam and immigration. There is the danger in the immediate aftermath that this is going to strengthen the anti-immigration campaigns, but you have to have a longer-term strategy when the emotions subside."
The masked men haven't revealed what their motive was. Also, no organisation has claimed responsibly for the attack. The attackers are known to have shouted "Allahu Akbar," or "God is great" in Abrabic while launching the attack.
