Two arrested over killing of 85-year-old French Jewish woman

Two men have been arrested over the killing of an 85-year-old Jewish woman whose body was found after a fire broke out in her Paris apartment, police sources say.

An autopsy conducted on the woman, who lived alone, showed she had been stabbed several times before Friday’s blaze.

She was identified only as “Mireille K.” by the Jewish Community Protection Service (SPCJ), which works closely with the French police.

The Paris prosecutor’s office said yesterday that it had not yet determined a motive, but “is not excluding any hypothesis.”

“The investigation has uncovered elements suggesting there was not an anti-Semitic motive, but this possibility has not yet been excluded,” the SPCJ said in a statement last night.

A Paris lawmaker who spoke with one of the woman’s sons said she had managed to evade as a child the notorious 1942 roundup of over 13,000 Jews in Paris during World War II.

Fewer than 100 of those who were were detained at the so-called Vel d’Hiv cycling track and then sent to the Nazi death camps survived.

— AFP