— Reuters picTUNIS, Jan 10 — A Jewish school on a Tunisian island that is home to an ancient Jewish community was attacked late on Tuesday as violent anti-government protests raged elsewhere in the North African country, witnesses said. No one was hurt but the school suffered some light damage in the attack late on Tuesday during a violent protest against austerity measures in the tourist resort island of Djerba, the head of the Jewish community, Perez Trabelsi, told Reuters. There were no protests in Djerba but locals said the assailants had exploited the fact that there was a reduced security presence as police were busy elsewhere combating anti-government protests around the country.“Unknown people took the opportunity of the protests and threw Molotov cocktails into the lobby of a Jewish religious school in Djerba,” Trabelsi said.Trabelsi's son, Elie, an activist from the Djerba Jewish community wrote on Facebook that there had been a failed attempt to burn a house of prayer in the Jewish neighborhood with a Molotov cocktail and that thankfully nobody had been hurt. Jews have lived in Tunisia for over 2,000 years and Djerba is home to Africa’s oldest synagogue, El Ghriba, which was hit by al Qaeda-linked terrorists in 2002 in a truck bomb attack that killed 21 people including Western tourists.In an interview last year with a Tunisian radio station, Perez Trabelsi declared that Tunisian security was better than Israeli security, in response to an Israeli warning against travel to the country.
A Jewish school on the Tunisian island of Djerba is firebombed.