“I've lived here for 12 years, it's the first time something like that has happened. I'm scared now,” said Atrache (AFP)

AJACCIO, France, November 28 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Unknown assailants shot at and almost killed an imam on the French Mediterranean island of Corsica on Saturday, November 27, and fled after daubing racist graffiti on a building where he was staying.

Prosecutor Jose Thorel said a group of men drove up to a house which serves as a Muslim cultural centre and prayer hall in the southern Corsican town of Sartene at 2:30 a.m., reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

They shouted racist insults which brought imam Mohammad El-Atrache to the door, although he did not open it.

The assailants then fired several shots at the door and the bullets would have hit the imam if had not had the good sense to flattening himself against the wall, Thorel said.

The group then left after daubing a swastika and the slogan “Arabi For a” (Arabs Out in the Corsican language) on the walls of the building.

“I was asleep when I heard someone banging very loudly on the door. I went toward the door, they were shouting 'Arabs out'. It was the voice of someone young,” the still visibly shocked imam told AFP later.

“They fired! I flattened myself against the wall and I heard them leave quickly afterward,” the 53-year-old Moroccan said.

Ten bullet holes were visible on the door, all at head and chest height.

In the corridor leading to a prayer room, a glass door was broken in two and one of the nine-millimeter bullets was stuck in the kitchen wall, about 10 meters (yards) away.

First Time

Atrache’s friends are seen through a bullet-ripped window inside the mosque (AFP)

Atrache said it was the first time he had been threatened.

“I've lived here for 12 years; it's the first time something like that has happened. I'm scared now,” he said.

“But I don't think they came here intending to kill me. It's a bit like in Bastia or Ajaccio (the island's two main cities) or elsewhere ... young people with nothing better to do,” he said.

Corsica, which is home to a strong nationalist movement, has recently seen an upsurge in attacks on North African immigrants.

Emotions were also running high among around a dozen people who often attend “The Sartene Muslim Cultural Association (SMCA)” and who came Saturday out of solidarity.

In less than two weeks, 21 people have been arrested on the island as part of inquiries into racist acts. Fourteen of them, including many youths allegedly linked to the armed Clandestinia Corsi group, will face trial.

“The problem here is that there is no enemy in front of you to try to explain things to ... Our children were born here, we're integrated and don't have any trouble with the people here,” said one, who refused to be named.

Condemnation

Thorel, the public prosecutor, said he had ordered gendarmes to “investigate a flagrant assassination attempt” after interviewing the imam.

The attack was condemned by Pierre-Rene Lemas, Corsica's prefect, the highest ranking French government official on the island.

He said French Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin has “confirmed his instructions for tough measures in response to all racist or xenophobic acts.”

Meanwhile in Paris, the French Socialist Party issued a statement condemning the shooting incident and said it signaled a new, disturbing decline in security on the island.

“The investigation into this odious act should be carried out with the utmost diligence and the guilty parties severely punished,” it said.

In the town of Calvi, in northern Corsica, around 200 people rallied later Saturday to protest against the rise in racist attacks and submitted a petition signed by around 1,000 people to the local authorities.

“It's a shame, because it is always the small minority who ensure that every Corsican is stigmatized,” a member of the SMCA told AFP.

French experts and activists in the field of human rights have warned of the unprecedented escalation of Islamophobia and racism against the Muslim and Arab communities in France during the past two years.

Several mosques in France have recently come under a string of racist attacks and arsons.

Mosques and Muslim graves in two cemeteries have been defaced with swastikas and Neo-Nazi slogans in June.

Last March, two mosques were hit by arson attacks in the two cities of Seynod and Annecy.