I was shocked and saddened to hear of this morning’s fatal incident in Toulouse, France, in which a teacher and three young children were shot and killed outside a Jewish school.
The attack appears to have racist motivations, and police have provisionally linked it with two other recent shooting incidents in the same area, in which three French servicemen of North African origin were murdered.
It also bears echoes of last summer’s horrific attack in Norway, in which 76 people were killed and 92 injured by the white supremacist Anders Behring Breivik.
These are hate crimes of the gravest nature. My heart reaches out to the familes of those whose lives have been so cruelly snatched by these hateful killers, and with the young man who was also injured in today’s attack: I hope and pray that he makes a full recovery.