An explosion at a kosher grocery shop near Paris, reportedly caused by a grenade, damaged the store and injured a shopper, French police said.

Police have not linked Wednesday afternoon’s attack to the release of caricatures hours earlier by a Paris weekly depicting the Muslim Prophet Muhammad, including one featuring a haredi Orthodox Jew and a religious Muslim.

The store in the Paris suburb of Sarcelles reportedly was full of shoppers after the Rosh Hashanah holiday beginning their preparations for the pre-Yom Kippur meal, Moshe Cohen-Sabban, president of the Jewish communities of Val d’Oise, told the French online edition of the newspaper Metro.

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

Richard Prasquier, the president of CRIF, the umbrella group representing French Jewish communities, told the television channel i>TELE that two men dressed in black had tossed an explosive device into the shop without saying anything.

“I have no reason to doubt the anti-Semitic character of this action,” Prasquier said.

According to Metro, the injured shopper sustained contusions in both arms. The newspaper quoted Marc Djeballi, a member of the Sarcelles Jewish community, as saying the device was “a grenade, not a firecracker.”

Sarcelles, which is known as “Little Jerusalem,” is home to a large Jewish community that emigrated from North Africa in the 1960s.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

2X match on all Passover gifts!

$90 → $180 $180 → $360

$360 → $720

Other amount