Six killed in synagogue blast

Fears of anti-semitic attacks spreading through the Arab world were sparked yesterday after six people, including four German tourists, were killed when a lorry carrying bottled gas exploded by a synagogue on the Tunisian resort island of Djerba.

Although Tunisian authorities insisted the explosion was an accident, Israel's deputy foreign minister Michael Melchior claimed that a "wave of recent (anti-semitic) events reached its peak today with the cruel murder of tourists at the ancient synagogue of Djerba."

Tunisian authorities said the Arab driver of the lorry, a police officer and four other people had died when it ran into the outer fence of the El Ghriba synagogue and exploded. A German tour bus was parked nearby.

About 20 injured people, many of them German tourists with serious burns, were helicoptered to the main hospital on the island.

In the current climate of anger over Israel's two-week old invasion of Palestinian territories, and with news routinely censored by Tunisian authorities, rumours circulated in Tunis that the explosion might have been deliberate. One diplomatic source said: "It is being reported as an accident. But there are rumours. The gas lorries do not normally spontaneously explode."

The synagogue's president, Perez Trabelsi, said it seemed unlikely that the truck had been driven by a suicide bomber. "If it had been an attack, it would have targeted people inside the synagogue," he said.

The synagogue, set in the middle of an olive grove, is a site of pilgrimage for Jews and was open to visitors when the blast occurred.

Tunisia suppresses radical Islamic movements and is not known as a hotbed of terrorism, though several Al-Qaida suspects arrested in Europe in recent months have come from there.

Tens of thousands of Jews lived in Djerba in the early 20th century but tensions in the Arab world prompted many to leave and there are now just 2,000.