Many mosques have been vandalized recently across Europe.

PARIS — Vandals scrawled swastikas and racist slogans on the walls of two mosques in France and threw Molotov cocktails at a mosque in central Russia on Sunday, September 24, the day French and Russian Muslims started celebrating Ramadan.

The mosque which was torched, in the northwest town of Quimper, suffered damage from the flames. Six swastikas were painted on the outside of its walls, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported Monday, September 25.

In the southwestern town of Carcassonne, the other mosque was daubed with swastikas and slogans reading "France for the French", "Arabs get out" and "Death to Islam", officials said.

No-one has claimed responsibility for the vandalism and investigations have been launched to find the perpetrators.

Religious and anti-racism groups condemned the attacks.

"This is odious because it is stupid and nasty and because it shows a radical ignorance of Islam," Dalil Boubakeur, president of the French Council for the Muslim Faith, told AFP.

"The criminal intention doubles up with a desire to disturb, in a particularly vile way, the peaceful course of ceremonies that accompany this month of fasting and penitence," Boubakeur said.

The Movement Against Racism and for Friendship between People (MRAP) expressed its solidarity with Muslims and blamed an environment in which Islam was increasingly being associated with terrorism.

This is "part of the Islam equals terrorism equation," MRAP said in a statement.

"The far right's political maneuvering on the theme that France is becoming Islamized contributes to an obnoxious climate that fosters these kind of acts," the rights group said.

The Quimper mosque had already had been vandalized several times since it was built in February 2003.

Five million Muslims live in France, the largest Muslim minority in Europe.

Moltov Attack

In central Russia, unidentified attackers threw Molotov cocktails at a mosque in Yaroslavl in the early hours of Sunday, but the building did not catch fire, the head of a local Muslim organization said.

"About half past midnight, several young people got into the mosque's courtyard and threw bottles filled with inflammable substances at the windows of a first-floor room," Kury Kalimov told the Interfax news agency.

A religious service was taking place at the time and there were worshippers in the room, but the bottles hit the window frame and fell back without exploding, he explained.

The attackers also threw stones, breaking a number of mosque windows as well as the windows of cars parked in the courtyard.

After the incident a spokeswoman for the council of Russian muftis, Gulnor Gazieva, said she was worried and angry.

Speaking on Moscow's Echo radio station, she called on the Muslim minority "not to give in to any provocation, to stay calm and to pass the month of Ramadan in the goodness of fasting."

Russia has a Muslim population of 20 million people concentrated in north of the Caucasus and in the central parts of the country.