Two young men have been placed under formal investigation in France for planning a “deadly and antisemitic” attack, the counterterrorism prosecutor’s office (PNAT) said in a statement on Sunday.

The suspects, a 22-year-old engineering student and an unemployed 20-year-old who are brothers, were arrested last Tuesday after police found a semi-automatic firearm, a bottle of acid, and an ISIS flag in their car during a roadside police stop near a prison in northern France, PNAT said. It gave no details about the nature of the planned attack or its target.

The two are being investigated on charges of criminal terrorist conspiracy and possessing a weapon in connection with a terrorist undertaking, and have been placed in pre-trial detention. The PNAT did not release the suspects’ full identities.

Concerns about attacks against ⁠Jewish communities ​around the world have risen ​following US and Israeli attacks on Iran and the subsequent retaliation from Tehran.

In the US, an armed man, Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, crashed his truck into a Detroit-area synagogue and preschool on Thursday before fatally shooting himself. Officials later found large quantities of commercial-grade fireworks and several jugs of a liquid believed to be gasoline.

Several of Ghazali’s relatives were said to have been killed in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon earlier this month amid renewed fighting with Hezbollah. The IDF said on Sunday that Ghazali’s brother, who was killed in the strike, was a commander in the Iran-backed terror group.

Meanwhile in Europe, an explosion caused minor damage to a Jewish school in Amsterdam on Saturday, and another explosion caused a fire at a synagogue in Belgium on Monday.

The French interior ministry reinforced security around Jewish places of worship in early March.

The French authorities said jihadist propaganda was found on the suspects’ digital devices, and one of the brothers had filmed a video pledging allegiance to ISIS.

Antisemitism in France has soared since Hamas’s attack sparked the war in Gaza. The country saw 1,570 antisemitic incidents in 2024, nearly four times the average level before the October 7 assault, according to the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions.

Governments and human rights advocates have noted a similar rise in antisemitism, Islamophobia, and anti-Arab bias around the world in the same period.

France’s human rights commission, the CNCDH, has said antisemitic acts in France tend to increase after Israeli military operations in Gaza or the West Bank.

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antisemitism in France

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