Latest in string of vandalism cases

Latest in string of vandalism cases

Paris denounces attack on Muslim war graves

Bosnia mosque

Vandals also desecrated 148 Muslim graves in France's biggest war cemetery earlier this year (File)

Lille, FRANCE (AFP, AlArabiya.net)

Vandals carried out a fresh attack on the graves of hundreds of Muslim war veterans in France's biggest military cemetery in an assault President Nicolas Sarkozy denounced Monday as "revolting." The graves in Notre Dame de Lorette cemetery were sprayed with graffiti on Sunday night, the eve of Islam's Eid al-Adha feast, a police spokesman said, adding that a hunt was under way to find the culprits.

The cemetery, near the northern border with Belgium, commemorates the tens of thousands of victims of a series of long and bloody battles for control of northern France at the start of World War I.

" These are probably the tombs of heroes who fell in combat. This is a hateful, scandalous act, an insult to all Muslims " Dalil Boubaker It had already been hit in April this year, when vandals desecrated 148 Muslim graves, hanging a pig's head from one tombstone and daubing slogans insulting France's Muslim justice minister, Rachida Dati, who is of North African descent. Sunday's attack came days after Jewish settlers in the West Bank town of Hebron vandalized Muslim graves with graffiti defaming the Prophet Muhammad and almost exactly a year after neo-Nazi vandals painted swastikas on 52 of the French cemetery's Muslim graves. Prior to 2007, there were four incidents involving the desecration of Muslim graves in northern and eastern France in 2004, and one in 2003. Jewish graves have also been vandalized. Sarkozy denounced the latest outrage as "abject and revolting" and "the expression of a repugnant racism directed against the Muslim community of France." Two young men with neo-Nazi sympathies are awaiting trial over April's desecration. They deny involvement. Inaugurated in 1925, the Notre Dame de Lorette cemetery houses the remains of about 40,000 soldiers, half of them in named graves. After the April attacks the head of the Grand Mosque in Paris, Dalil Boubaker, told a French radio station: "These are probably the tombs of heroes who fell in combat. This is a hateful, scandalous act, an insult to all Muslims." The Muslim sector includes 576 tombs, grouped together and turned towards Mecca.

Bosnia mosque In related news, a mosque in southeastern Bosnia was burnt to the ground and only left the minaret standing early on Monday, state television reported. Police said they were investigating the cause of the blaze in Fazlagica Kula, a village near the town of Gacko The village is in Bosnia's Serb republic, an autonomous region that makes the country along with the Muslim-Croat federation. Few Muslim families have returned into the Serb-controlled area after the 1992-95 war. The Bosnian Muslims or Bosniaks account for nearly a half the population in Bosnia, alongside Roman Catholic Croats and Orthod