A man yelling “Allahu akbar!” has been accused of cutting down a Christmas tree installed by a French town hall earlier this week and arrested by local police.
The felling of the Christmas tree took place on Wednesday in Lormont, a town located in the suburbs of the city of Bordeaux.
The alleged vandal, said to be a resident of the neighbourhood, arrived at the location of the tree on the rue Georges-Jérôme-Duret in the afternoon at around 1 p.m.
The 39-year-old managed to discreetly bring several tools with him to accomplish his deed, and shouted “Allahu akbar!” as he cut the tree down, Sud Ouest reports.
Police were alerted to the man’s activities and arrived on the scene a short time later to arrest him. While it is unknown what motivated the man’s alleged crime, police suggested that he appeared as though he was not fully mentally competent.
The incident in Lormont comes just days after a nativity scene in a suburb of the city of Strasbourg was allegdly set on fire by a pair of arsonists.
“There were several fires at the level of the small animals and the little Jesus,” the Mayor of Illkirch-Graffenstaden, Thibaud Philipps, said.
“On the surveillance videos that we were able to extract, we see two individuals stepping over the barricade to go to the nursery, which confirms the criminal trail,” the mayor added.
“Everything will be done to find the perpetrators and ensure that they are convicted. These are acts that we strongly condemn and that attack our traditions and values.”
These apparently anti-Christian and anti-Christmas attacks are just the latest in France, however.
In 2019, for example, a group of 50 or so far-left extremists stormed a nativity play in Toulouse involving children, harassing and shouting at people and calling them “fascists”.
The nativity had to be shut down just an hour after it had begun due to the children becoming frightened of the extremists.