Security strengthened after synagogue shots

French president Francois Hollande met leaders of the country’s Jewish community and pledged to fight extremism and anti-Semitism “with the greatest firmness”.

He said authorities “in the coming days, in the coming hours” would increase security at Jewish religious sites so they would not be subject to the kind of attack that targeted a synagogue in the Paris suburb of Argenteuil on Saturday.

A representative of the synagogue said the building was targeted with about eight blank bullets and services were cancelled. The representative, who spoke on condition of anonymity because a police investigation is under way, said no one was hurt.

It came hours after police carried out raids across France targeting a suspected jihadist cell of young Frenchmen recently converted to Islam. DNA on a grenade that exploded last month at a kosher grocery store led them to a member of the cell, who was killed in a shootout with police.

Officials said he had been under surveillance since last spring – around the time a French Islamist radical went on a shooting rampage against a Jewish school and French soldiers, killing seven people.

A leading French Muslim organisation, the CFCM, denounced the synagogue attack. It said it “assures the French Jewish community of its support and fraternal solidarity”.