Eight people, including a 7-year-old girl, were injured after two gunmen opened fire outside a mosque in Southeast France on Sunday night. Two “hooded men” pulled up in a Renault Clio and opened fire on worshippers as they were leaving the Arrahma mosque in Avignon, Provence, The Telegraph reported.
Four people were injured at the site of the shooting, and a family of four in an apartment nearby sustained shrapnel wounds, according to local La Provence newspaper.
However, the prosecutor’s office is not treating the incident as a terrorist attack. “From what we know this evening, the mosque was not targeted. The fact that it happened in the street of the religious establishment was unconnected with it,” the prosecutor said.
District Magistrate Laure Chabaud said the shooting was likely a result of a dispute between youths, BBC reported.
The Avignon incident comes two weeks after a man ploughed his vehicle into worshippers outside a Finsbury Park mosque in London. One person was killed and nine others were injured in the attack. On Thursday, a man was arrested after trying to run over worshippers outside the Creteil mosque in southeast Paris.
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