Polish synagogue avoids major damage in Molotov cocktail attack

A Warsaw synagogue was hit by a bottle containing a flammable substance on Wednesday, police said, prompting condemnation from Polish political leaders. Poland's chief rabbi Michael Schudrich told Reuters that nobody was hurt in the incident, which took place around 1 a.m.

A Warsaw synagogue was hit by a bottle containing a flammable substance on Wednesday, police said, prompting condemnation from Polish political leaders.

Poland's chief rabbi Michael Schudrich told Reuters that nobody was hurt in the incident, which took place around 1 a.m. (2300 GMT on Tuesday). Jewish community officials said security camera footage appeared to show that three Molotov cocktails were thrown within a matter of seconds although it was not clear if one or more assailants were involved.

Police said they were still looking into the incident and had not yet established a motive for the attack. "We were informed overnight about an incident involving a bottle containing a flammable liquid being thrown onto synagogue grounds," a police spokesperson said.

Attacks against Jews and Jewish targets have risen worldwide since war erupted in Gaza last October following an attack on Israel by Hamas-led militants and Israel's subsequent military offensive. The Warsaw incident left soot marks around a ground-floor window of the synagogue as well as a burned area on the grass below.

"Look there", Schudrich told reporters at a news conference at the synagogue, pointing at the burn marks on the building. "If it (the bottle) had gone 15 centimetres to the left it would have reached the window and possibly inside the synagogue. There's a library there."

"Here there's no context, there's no other possibility - it's antisemitism," he added when asked about a possible motive. Israel's ambassador to Poland, Yacov Livne, said the synagogue was the only one in Warsaw to have survived World War Two and the Holocaust.

"Outrageous antisemitic attacks such as this cannot be tolerated today. The perpetrators must be found and punished," Livne wrote on X. Polish President Andrzej Duda called the attack "shameful". "There is no place for anti-Semitism in Poland! There is no place for hatred in Poland!" he said on X.

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