A previously unknown group calling itself Jamaat Ansar al-Jihad al-Islamiya says it set fire to a Jewish soup kitchen in Paris, according to an Internet statement.
"A group of mujahideen youth who regularly pray at the mosque set fire to the Jewish temple in Paris," said the statement, dated today, which could not be authenticated.
"This was in response to the defiling of Muslim graves and also to commemorate the 35th anniversary of the fire that ravaged the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem," added the statement, which was published on a website used by Islamists.
Arsonists had set fire to the soup kitchen in central Paris early on Sunday morning and daubed Nazi symbols on the building, in the latest anti-Semitic violence in France, home to western Europe's largest Muslim and Jewish minorities.
No one was killed or injured in the attack on the centre.
Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin said the perpetrators could face up to 20 years in prison or even life imprisonment under a new anti-racism measure in France.
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.