An identifiably Jewish teenager who attends the Toulouse school attacked by an Islamist gunman earlier this year has been targeted by thugs on a train.
The 17-year-old boy was allegedly insulted and harassed by a group of men on a train to Lyon last week. He was wearing a kippah at the time.
According to police, the men began beating the boy up and only stopped when another passenger and the train's conductor became involved in the situation.
The victim, who was on the way to visit his family, is a pupil at the Ozer Hatorah school, the site of Mohammed Merah's shooting rampage in march. Merah killed a rabbi and three children at the school during his killing spree around Toulouse.
The teenager was hospitalised in the wake of the attack and has now brought charges against the bullies. The French Jewish umbrella organisation, Crif, said that two alleged attackers had been arrested.
The incident was described as an act of "antisemitic aggression" by Interior Minister Manuel Valls, who urged the French people to "fight against all the resurgences of this strong evil that is the antisemitism in our country". He said antisemitism was "an offence against the values and history of our republic".
Earlier this month a recording of Merah before he died in a shoot-out with police was leaked to a news site. On the tape, the gunman can be heard saying: "You have a man who is not afraid of death. For me, death, I love it like you love life."
