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Loaves and Fishes Miracle Church Attacked in Suspected Arson

The famous Catholic church at holy site in Tabgha, northern Israel, was damaged in a suspected arson attack by Jewish religious extremists early on Thursday.
Photo by Atef Safadi/EPA

A Catholic church at the site where Jesus is said to have performed the loaves and fishes miracle was defaced and badly damaged in a suspected arson attack by Jewish religious extremists in the early hours of Thursday morning.

The blaze reduced a substantial part of the Church of the Multiplication to charred cinders. It has forced the holy site in Tabgha, on the shore of the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel, to close its doors for at least the next three days. Among the most badly affected parts of the site is an office for pilgrims, a souvenir shop, and a meeting room.

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Outside Hebrew graffiti reading "false idols will be destroyed" was scrawled in red paint on one of the church's walls.

Areas reserved for prayer were not badly affected by the fire but bibles and other religious texts were destroyed according to Father Matthias Karl, a German monk from the church. Two people were also hospitalized after inhaling smoke during the fire.

The timing of the incident, multiple ignition points, and the graffiti suggests that the blaze was not started accidentally and was a hate crime, Mickey Rosenfeld, an Israeli Police spokesman, told VICE News. "Currently the main line of inquiry is that the fire was deliberately caused by a group of individuals who then fled the scene," he added.

Church officials say that this is not the first time the site has been attacked and that last year a group of youths, mainly Jewish, pelted worshippers with stones, threw benches into the lake, and destroyed a cross.

Sixteen suspects, all yeshiva students from settlements in West Bank, were arrested on Thursday morning in the north of Israel but later released after police said questioning eliminated them from inquiries. Their lawyer, Itamar Ben Gvir, said on Israeli Army Radio that authorities had no evidence against the youths and that they were under suspicion just for looking like young settlers.

Currently no suspects are being held in relation to Thursday's attack on the church but Rosenfeld said that the investigation is "ongoing."

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The modern limestone building, constructed in the 1980s on top of the sites of fourth and fifth century churches, is known for its eye-catching Byzantine mosaics and is a place of pilgrimage for Christians, attracting around 5,000 visitors a day.

Photo by Atef Safadi/EPA

Israel's Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan condemned the attack as an "act of lowly cowardice" and said "zero tolerance" would be shown towards attacks on places of worship and religious buildings.

"We will not let anyone disrupt the coexistence between religions in Israel. Harming the principle of tolerance between religions is a blow to the most crucial values in Israel," he added.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the attack as "shocking" and called on security services to make the investigation a top priority.

Photos by Atef Safadi/EPA

In recent years several mosques and church sites in Israel have also been subject to attacks by vandals, often believed to be extremist Jewish settlers.

In January a bilingual Hebrew-Arabic school in Israel's capital was torched in an apparent hate crime. In February a religious school affiliated with Jerusalem's Greek Orthodox Church set on fire and defaced with anti-Christian graffiti. A mosque in a village near Bethlehem was also set alight in February and several nearby houses spray-painted with anti-Arab slogans.

Jewish religious sites have also been the target of hate crimes by Muslim Palestinian extremists.

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In November last year four Jewish worshippers attending morning prayer at a synagogue in west Jerusalem were killed by two cousins, Uday Abu Jamal and Ghassan Abu Jamal, in a gruesome knife and gun attack.

Visitors to the Mount of Olives, a historic Jewish cemetery in Jerusalem with around 150,000 graves, have also reported being attacked by youths throwing stones and tombs being defaced.

Watch the VICE News documentary: A City Divided: Jerusalem's Most Contested Neighborhood.

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The Associated Press contributed to this report.