Eight Held for Suicide Attack on Synagogue

French intelligence agents have arrested eight people in connection with the suicide attack earlier this year on a synagogue in Tunisia that killed 21 people, the interior ministry said yesterday.

The suspects were detained in the Lyon area by agents from the DST counter-intelligence service acting on instructions from France's leading anti-terrorist judge, Jean-Louis Bruguière, the ministry said in a statement.

Judicial sources identified one of the eight as Walid Naouar, the brother of the man believed to have been driving the lorry when it exploded outside the 2,000- year-old El Ghriba synagogue on the Tunisian holiday island of Djerba on April 11.

Responsibility for the attack was claimed by the Islamic Army for the Liberation of the Holy Sites, a group believed to have close ties with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network. The same group took credit for the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Fourteen Germans, five Tunisians and a French man were killed when the tanker lorry, containing cooking gas, blew up near the synagogue. The supposed driver, Nizar Naouar, a 24-year-old Tunisian, was also reported to have died in the explosion.

Naouar's parents, brother-in-law and two family friends were among the suspects arrested at Saint-Pirest and Vénissieux near Lyon, the city's prosecutor, Christian Hassensrat, said. All eight can be held for up to four days without being charged.

In Tunisia, Naouar's uncle, Belgacem Naouar, was also arrested and is likely to face charges of concealing information about preparations for the bombing.

Judge Bruguière's investigation into Naouar's relatives and friends in France was launched after a formal complaint for "assassination and attempted assassination in relation to a terrorist organisation" filed by the son of Paul Sauvage, 75, who was the synagogue attack's only French victim.