France condemns racist attacks

French leaders have condemned two racist attacks in which assailants daubed swastikas on the wall of a mosque and tried to set fire to a train carriage used to symbolise the Nazi persecution of the Jews.

A petrol bomb was thrown at the carriage, which the Nazi Germans used to send Jews from the Drancy transit camp near Paris to concentration and death camps, police said.

The carriage, which remains in Drancy as a monument and resembles a cattle or goods truck, was not badly damaged.

In the other attack, a dozen swastikas, the SS initials of Adolf Hitler's guard and the words "Get out!" were daubed in black paint on the outer wall of the Grand Mosque in Paris.