French police have apprehended and detained a suspect in a terror attack on a synagogue in a southwestern Mediterranean town that injured a police officer, the country’s acting interior minister said Sunday.

Two cars parked at the Beth Yaacov synagogue complex in the seaside resort town of La Grande Motte, near Montpellier, were set ablaze just after 8 a.m. Saturday. Firefighters discovered additional fires at two entrances to the synagogue. A police officer who walked up to the site was injured after a propane gas tank placed near the burning vehicles exploded.

Five people, including the rabbi, who were present in the synagogue complex at the time of the attack were unharmed, it added.

BFM TV said the suspect was a 33-year-old Algerian. Local police did not provide details.

The anti-terrorism prosecutor’s office said on Sunday morning that the suspect was arrested shortly before midnight on Saturday:  “Before the police could intervene, (the suspect) opened fire on the (police), which returned fire. The man was wounded in the face,” the office said in a statement, adding that two other suspects were arrested.

“The alleged perpetrator of the arson attack on the synagogue has been arrested,” Gerald Darmanin, the acting interior minister, said in a post on X. He visited the site on Saturday afternoon along with acting Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, whose father is Jewish, and met with local officials and the synagogue staff.

Darmanin also hailed the “professional conduct” of police forces and its elite intervention unit “despite the gunfire” during the operation.

Prosecutors were investigating the attack as an attempted assassination linked to a terrorist group and destruction of property with dangerous means, and a crime planned by a terrorist group with an intent to cause harm, the statement said.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem & AP)