Police Kill a Man Who Set Himself on Fire Outside a Tunisian Synagogue

Outside view of the Great Synagogue of Tunis, Tunisia, Tuesday, May 15, 2018. (AP Photo/Hassene Dridi, File)

7:50 AM EST, January 25, 2025

TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) — A man set himself on fire in front of the Grand Synagogue in the Tunisian capital and was killed by police, the Interior Ministry said. A police officer and a passerby suffered burns.

The man started the fire after sundown Friday, around the time the synagogue holds Sabbath prayers.

The Interior Ministry said in a statement that the man advanced toward a law enforcement officer while ablaze, and a second officer opened fire to protect his colleague. The officer was hospitalized with burns, as was a passerby, the statement said.

The ministry did not release the man’s identity or potential motive for his act, saying only that he had unspecified psychiatric disorders.

Tunisia was historically home to a large Jewish population, now estimated to number about 1,500 people. Jewish sites in Tunisia have been targeted in the past.

A national guardsman killed five people at the 2,600-year-old El-Ghriba synagogue on the island of Djerba after an annual pilgrimage in 2023. Later that year, pro-Palestinian protesters vandalized a historic synagogue and sanctuary in the southern town of El Hamma. And a garden was set ablaze last year outside the synagogue in the coastal city of Sfax.

Tunisia’s recent history was also marked by the self-immolation of a street vendor in 2010 in a protest linked to economic desperation, corruption and repression. Mohamed Bouazizi’s act unleashed mass protests that led to the ouster of Tunisia’s autocratic ruler and uprisings across the region known as the Arab Spring.