Arsonists set fire to a Jewish soup kitchen in central Paris early this morning and daubed Nazi symbols on the building, police said, in the latest anti-Semitic act in France.
There were no injuries in the attack on the kitchen which prepares food for the needy of Paris. President Jacques Chirac vowed to pursue those responsible and severely punish them.
It was the second anti-Semitic act in the French capital in about a week after vandals last Saturday drew a swastika and wrote "death to the Jews" on a low wall in front of Paris's Notre Dame cathedral.
A wave of such attacks have hit eastern France, with more than 300 tombs or graves desecrated since April - many in Jewish cemeteries but also some Muslim and a few Christian graves.
"There's no doubt about the stupid and criminal motivations of those who burn down a soup kitchen while inscribing anti-Semitic graffiti," a spokesman for the Jewish representative council in France (CRIF) said.
"It's definitely Jewish hatred which inspires them. The CRIF asks the authorities to promptly arrest and sanction in an exemplary manner the perpetrators of this odious act which besmirches France," he added.