Three Jewish Youths Assaulted in Lyon Suburbs

The AFP reports

Three Jewish youths, aged 16 to 18 years, were kicked and punched Sunday night in the streets of Villeurbanne (Rhône) by a group of young persons of whom four have been detained, police sources said on Monday. Two of the victims will be unable to return to work for six days, according to a press release from the local police station. The police were able to intervene very quickly. The four [ "alleged" ?— D.] assailants are under observation at Villeurbanne police headquarters. Three of them are minors, according the same source. According to the local police station, "the victims had also been the victims of a similar assault several days earlier." According to the Representative Council of France's Jewish Institutions' (Crif) regional office in Rhône-Alpes, one of the victims was wearing a Kippa and a second wore a baseball cap with a Hebrew inscription on it. The aggressors were youths of Maghreban appearance, also according to Crif. Crif Rhône-Alpes president Marcel Amsallem told the AFP that the three youths had been attacked "because one of them wore a kippa, because they were Jews." One received blows to the ribs and in the mouth, the second, to the temples and the base of the skull and the third, in the cheek, according to Crif. The victims do not recall hearing insults of an anti-Semitic nature spoken during the assault. But, according to Crif, the mother of one of the assailants, interviewed in front of her home shortly after the assault, reportedly used the expression, "Dirty Jew." One of the victims of the assault also reportedly recognized in the group two or three youths who were involved in a brawl outside a Villeurbanne high school that occurred on May 13 during which anti-Jewish insults were heard, according to the same source.