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The murder of a Tunisian man by his French neighbour in southern France, which is being investigated as a terror crime, has horrified the local community and raised alarm over rising racism in the country.Tributes poured in from shocked neighbours and friends mourning the murder of Hichem Miraoui, with more than a dozen bouquets placed outside the barbershop where he worked in the quiet town of Puget-sur-Argens.”I don’t understand why he was killed. Why all this hatred?” said Sylvia Elvasorre, a 65-year-old pensioner who lives next to the hair salon, tears in her eyes.Marwouen Gharssalli, 43, echoed her disbelief, saying his friend was generous and willing to lend a helping hand.”He even cut hair for free when people couldn’t pay… he regularly used to cut my son’s hair,” said Gharssalli, a welder in the southern town.A card signed by fellow shopkeepers said the death of Miraoui — remembered as hard-working and warm — would “leave a void”.Christophe B., a French national, shot and killed Miraoui, 46, on Saturday evening before injuring another neighbour, a Turkish national. The suspect, born in 1971, was arrested after his partner alerted police.He posted racist videos on social media both before and after the attack, according to regional prosecutor Pierre Couttenier.A silent march is planned in Puget-sur-Argens on Sunday to affirm the city’s “absolute rejection of hatred and our commitment to respect, tolerance and fraternity,” said a town hall statement.- ‘Complete impunity’ -The shooting followed the murder of a Malian man in a mosque in April, also in southern France, while the burning of a Koran near Lyon at the weekend has further fuelled concerns over rising anti-Muslim attacks in the country.”People are stunned that a racist crime like this could happen. This kind of thing is not part of Puget’s culture,” said Paul Boudoube, the town’s mayor.Miraoui was in a video call with family planning for the major Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, when he was shot”He was joking with our sick mother when I heard him grunt and the call ended,” said Hanen Miraoui, the victim’s sister.According to French daily Le Parisien, the suspect in Miraoui’s murder said he “swore allegiance to the French flag” and called on the French to “shoot” people of foreign origin in one of his videos posted on social media.Anti-terrorism prosecutors have taken over the investigation into the case, the first such racist attack linked to the far right to be dealt with as “terrorism” since their office was set up in 2019.”It means that investigative resources will be devoted to analysing the political motives behind this act and how this person became radicalised,” said the legal head of the anti-discrimination group SOS Racisme, Zelie Heran, who praised the referral.Following the murder, political and religious leaders have sounded the alarm over growing anti-Muslim acts in France, which increased by 72 percent in the first quarter, with 79 recorded cases, according to interior ministry figures.Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, who is taking an increasingly hard line on immigration issues, has faced accusations of not being firm enough against such crimes and even fuelling a racist climate.But he said on Tuesday that the killing of Miraoui was “clearly a racist crime”, “probably also anti-Muslim” and “perhaps also a terrorist crime.” Chems-Eddine Hafiz, the rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris, called on French President Emmanuel Macron to speak out. “It is time to hold accountable the promoters of this hatred who, in political and media circles, act with complete impunity and incite extremely serious acts,” said Hafiz.”Remind people of the reality that we are citizens of this country,” said Hafiz.France is home to the largest Muslim community in the European Union, as well as the largest Jewish population outside Israel and the United States.There has also been a rise in reported attacks against members of France’s Jewish community since Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023 and the Israeli military responded with a devastating military offensive on the Gaza Strip.France’s Holocaust memorial and three Paris synagogues and a restaurant were vandalised with paint on Saturday.

Syrian authorities insisted Wednesday they would “never be a threat” to anyone in the region, after Israel bombed the country’s south in retaliation for overnight rocket fire on the Golan Heights.Israeli media said the projectiles were the first launched from Syria into Israeli territory since the fall of longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad in December, with two unknown groups claiming responsibility.The Israeli military said “two projectiles were identified crossing from Syria into Israeli territory, and fell in open areas”. It later said it struck “weapons” belonging to the Syrian government in retaliation.Defence Minister Israel Katz held Syria’s leader “directly responsible”.Syria condemned the Israeli shelling as a “blatant violation of Syrian sovereignty” that “aggravates tensions in the region”.”Syria has never been and will never be a threat to anyone in the region,” the foreign ministry said, in a statement carried by the official SANA news agency.The ministry denied responsibility and said it could not confirm whether rockets were launched towards Israel, blaming “numerous parties… trying to destabilise the region”.There were no reports of casualties or damage on the Israeli side from the projectiles, which the military said triggered air raid sirens in the southern Golan Heights, a territory Israel seized from Syria in 1967 and annexed in 1981.Katz said in a statement that “we view the president of Syria as directly responsible for any threat or fire directed at the State of Israel”.Syria’s interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa led the Islamist group that spearheaded the offensive that toppled Assad.Following Assad’s overthrow, Israel moved its forces into the UN-patrolled demilitarised zone in the Golan, and has carried out hundreds of strikes against military targets in Syria.Israel says the strikes aim to stop advanced weapons from reaching Syria’s new authorities, whom it considers jihadists.- Escalation -A group called the “Martyr Mohammed al-Deif Brigades”, named after the Hamas commander killed by Israel in the Gaza Strip, released a video it said showed the moment the rockets landed in the occupied Golan Heights.A second group known as the “Islamic Resistance Front in Syria” claimed responsibility for launching the two rockets at Israel. The group was created a few months ago and called for action against Israel from south Syria.AFP was unable to verify the authenticity of their claims.SANA reported Israeli shelling “targeting the Yarmuk Basin, in the west of Daraa” province.The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said bombardments had hit farmland in the province, without reporting casualties.”Violent explosions shook southern Syria, notably the town of Quneitra and the Daraa region, following Israeli aerial strikes” overnight, the Britain-based war monitor said.Since taking over, Sharaa has said Syria does not want conflict with its neighbours, urging international pressure on Israel to halt its attacks.Analyst Bassam al-Suleiman said those benefiting from the escalation were “Iran and its militias”, former Assad allies with a past presence in Syria.A strong government in Damascus “apparently contradicts the Israeli vision for Syria” as a weak neighbour, he said.Israel’s recurring bombings of Syrian army infrastructure “hinders the emergence of a force capable of controlling all of Syria”, Suleiman added.Syria and Israel have technically been at war since 1948.US President Donald Trump last month lifted sanctions on Syria and expressed hope for eventual normalisation with Israel — though analysts say that remains unlikely.During a visit to Damascus last week, US Special Envoy for Syria Thomas Barrack proposed a “non-aggression agreement” as a starting point between the two countries.

A jihadist jailed over the Paris and Brussels attacks in 2015 and 2016 went on trial in Stockholm on Wednesday for his role in the 2014 capture and subsequent killing of a Jordanian pilot burned alive in Syria.The case is considered unique as the other jihadists involved in the brutal killing, which sparked international outrage at the time, are presumed dead, Swedish prosecutor Henrik Olin told AFP.Osama Krayem, a 32-year-old Swede, is already serving long prison sentences for his role in the Paris and Brussels attacks.He now faces charges of “serious war crimes and terrorist crimes” for his alleged role in the killing of the Jordanian pilot.On December 24, 2014, an aircraft belonging to the Royal Jordanian Air Force crashed in Syria.The pilot was captured the same day by fighters from the Islamic State (IS) group near the central city of Raqqa and burned alive in a cage sometime before February 3, 2015, when a video of the killing was published, according to the prosecution.The gruesome killing was captured in a slickly-produced propaganda video that was one of the first such videos released by IS.The killing shocked Jordan, which was participating in the US-led coalition’s strikes against IS positions in Syria.”Osama Krayem has, together and in agreement with other perpetrators belonging to IS, killed Maaz al-Kassasbeh,” prosecutor Reena Devgun told the court on Wednesday.”Osama Krayem, in uniform and armed, guarded and led the victim Maaz al-Kassasbeh to a metal cage, where the latter was then locked up. One of the co-perpetrators then set fire to Maaz al-Kassasbeh, who had no possibility to defend himself or call for help,” Devgun said.Krayem, wearing a dark blue shirt and with a thick beard and long, loose dark hair, had his back to the handful of journalists and spectators who followed the proceedings on Wednesday behind a glass wall in the high security courtroom in Stockholm’s district court.He appeared calm as the prosecution laid out the charges.The pilot’s execution was filmed and released as part of a 22-minute video accompanied by a specially-composed religious chant.In the video, the victim is seen walking past several masked IS fighters, including Krayem, according to prosecutors.The pilot is then seen being locked in the cage, praying, as he is set on fire.Prosecutors have been unable to determine the exact date of the murder but the investigation has identified the location where it took place.- Eyebrow scar -Bringing the case to trial was the result of extensive cooperation with officials in Belgium, France and the United States, prosecutor Olin said last week when the formal charges were pressed.It was thanks to a scar on the suspect’s eyebrow, visible in the video and spotted by Belgian police, that Krayem was identified and the investigation was opened, Devgun added last week. Other evidence in the case includes conversations on social media, including one where Krayem asks a person if he has seen a new video “where a man gets fried”, according to the investigation, a copy of which has been viewed by AFP.”I’m in the video,” Krayem said, pointing out the moment when the camera zooms in on his face.The other person replies: “Hahaha, yes, I saw the eyebrow.”The defendant’s lawyer, Petra Eklund, told AFP before the start of the trial that her client admitted to being present at the scene but disputed the prosecution’s version.”He denies the acts for which he is prosecuted,” she said.”He acknowledges having been present at that place during the event, but claims not to have acted in the manner described by the prosecutors in the account of the facts,” she added.Krayem, who is from Malmo in southern Sweden, joined the IS group in Syria in 2014 before returning to Europe in September 2015.He was arrested in Belgium in April 2016.In June 2022, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison in France for helping plan the November 2015 Paris attacks in which 130 people were killed.The following year, he was given a life sentence in Belgium for participating in the March 2016 bombings at Brussels’ main airport and on the metro system, which killed 32 people.Krayem has been temporarily handed over to Sweden to participate in the Stockholm trial, which is scheduled to last until June 26.

Nestled in the Sinai mountains, the ancient St Catherine’s Monastery has been the centre of recent tensions after an Egyptian court ruled last week that it sat on state-owned land.Dating back to the sixth century BC, the UNESCO World Heritage Site is the world’s oldest continuously inhabited monastery, attracting hundreds of pilgrims and tourists every year.Following warnings from the authorities and Orthodox Church in Greece that the ruling threatens the monastery’s status, a government delegation is travelling from Athens to Cairo on Wednesday to discuss the situation.- World’s oldest monastery -The monastery was founded by Byzantine Emperor Justinian in the sixth century at the biblical site of the burning bush at the foot of Mount Sinai, where Moses was believed to have received the 10 commandments, according to the world’s three major monotheistic religions.It was named for Saint Catherine of Alexandria, whose remains are housed in the church, along with rare iconography and manuscripts.It is headed by the Archbishop of Mount Sinai and Raithu, under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem.According to UNESCO, “the entire area is of immense spiritual significance” to Christianity, Islam and Judaism.The organisation says the monastery is “the property of the Greek Orthodox Church and belongs to the Archdiocese of Sinai”.- Ownership dispute -Last Wednesday, an Egyptian appeals court ruled that the monastery “is entitled to use” the land and the archaeological religious sites dotting the area, all of which “the state owns as public property”.The ruling, only a brief of which has been published by Egyptian media, has drawn criticism from the Orthodox patriarchates in Athens, Jerusalem and Istanbul.Archbishop Ieronymos, head of the Greek Orthodox church in Athens, warned the monastery’s property could now be “seized and confiscated”.Egypt has defended the court ruling, saying it “consolidates” the site’s sacred status.President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said Egypt was “fully committed to preserving the unique and sacred religious status of Saint Catherine’s monastery”, in a phone call with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.Mitsotakis meanwhile emphasised the importance of “preserving the pilgrimage and Greek Orthodox character of the monastery”.The delegation from Athens is expected to lay out its position on Wednesday.According to Greece’s state news agency, that position “is supported by a UNESCO document, which proves that Egypt had acknowledged in writing since 2002 that the ownership of the land and buildings belongs to the Greek Orthodox Church and the Archdiocese of Sinai”.- Megaproject -Construction began in March 2021 in the Saint Catherine area, which includes the eponymous town and a nature reserve, for a government megaproject known as the ‘Great Transfiguration’ of Saint Catherine.The project aims to bring upwards of a million tourists a year to the serene mountain village.Its many construction projects include an events hall, hundreds of hotel rooms and a new residential area housing hundreds of units.Observers say the project has harmed the reserve’s ecosystem and threatened both the monastery and the local community.According to a report by World Heritage Watch, the project has “destroyed the integrity of this historical and biblical landscape”.UNESCO in 2023 requested that Egypt “halt the implementation of any further development projects”, conduct an impact evaluation and develop a conservation plan.The government, which is campaigning for former tourism and antiquities minister Khaled al-Enany to head UNESCO from October, said in January that 90 percent of the project was complete.- Visitors -The peaks and valleys around Saint Catherine attract large groups of hikers, peaking at 2,000 visitors to Mount Sinai in a single day last December, local authorities reported.The area, 1.5 kilometres (one mile) above sea level, is particularly popular with both Egyptians and foreign tourists seeking a reprieve from overcrowded Red Sea resorts elsewhere in Sinai.- Bedouin tribe – The area is home to the Jabaliya tribe, whose name derives from the Arabic word for “mountain”.Said to be the descendants of the Roman soldiers who came to guard the monastery in its early days, they maintain a close connection to Saint Catherine, with many working as tour guides today.For decades, they have been calling for better infrastructure, including reliable water supply, emergency services and telecommunications coverage to improve their work and daily life.According to World Heritage Watch, they are currently outnumbered by the thousands of labourers building the megaproject.