Swiss police stepped up security Sunday and protesters marched in Zurich after an Orthodox Jewish man was stabbed in a possible anti-Semitic attack by a teenager.
Demonstrators marched from the leafy, residential District 2, where the attack took place late Saturday, to Helvetiaplatz in the city centre to hold an evening vigil, the ATS-Keystone news agency reported.
Many were carrying yellow umbrellas symbolising the fight against anti-Semitism.
Earlier Sunday, Zurich police said they were increasing security around Jewish institutions in the city following the attack in which the 50-year-old Jewish man was “critically injured”.
A 15-year-old Swiss boy suspected of carrying out the attack was arrested at the scene, police said.
A photographer working for AFP saw police officers stationed outside the Agudas Achim synagogue in Zurich.
A police statement said the motives for the attack remained unclear. But officers and the youth prosecutor’s office in charge of the investigation are looking into the possibility that it was an “anti-Semitic crime”.
After consulting with Jewish institutions in the city, police said they had decided to increase security as a “precautionary measure”.
– ‘Profoundly shocked’ –
The Swiss Federation of Israelite Communities (SIG) said Sunday evening that it was “profoundly shocked” that such an attack happened in Switzerland.
“For the time being, we do not think there is an imminent danger for Jewish persons or institutions,” it said, while calling on all members of the Jewish community to be vigilant.
The GRA Foundation Against racism and anti-Semitism condemned the attack, saying that witnesses had heard the alleged perpetrator shout “anti-Semitic slogans that suggest a hate crime”.
“It was not just an isolated case,” it said in a statement. “Since the escalation in the Middle East, anti-Semitic incidents in Switzerland have skyrocketed.”
Anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim hate crimes have been on the rise in many countries since Hamas militants from Gaza carried out an unprecedented attack inside Israel on October 7.
That attack resulted in the deaths of about 1,160 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official figures. It also saw the militants abduct 250 hostages, of whom 130 remain in captivity, including 31 presumed dead, according to Israel.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive against the Palestinian territory has killed more than 30,400 people, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.
