Bosnia mosque, French cemetery attacked during Eid

Muslim places were attacked as Muslims celebrated the Eid al-Adha religious holiday on Monday.

A mosque in southeastern Bosnia burnt to the ground early on Monday, state television reported.

Police said they were investigating the cause of the blaze in Fazlagica Kula, a village near the town of Gacko, which left only the mosque's minaret standing.

The village is in Bosnia's Serb republic, an autonomous region that makes the country along with the Muslim-Croat federation.

Few Muslim families have returned into the Serb-controlled area after the 1992-95 war.

Nazi symbols
Also, hundreds of tombstones in the Muslim part of a French military cemetery were found sprayed with Nazi symbols, in the third such attack on the site in less than two years.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy condemned the attack in the Notre-Dame de Lorette military cemetery near the northern town of Arras and the battlefields of World War One, calling for the perpetrators to be brought to justice quickly.

"This abject and revolting act, which follows that of last April, is the expression of repugnant racism aimed at France's Muslim community," Sarkozy's office said in a statement.

The neatly aligned white headstones, marking the graves of Muslim soldiers who died fighting for France, were spray-painted with neo-Nazi slogans such as "Heil Hitler", police said.

The graveyard was cordoned off and reporters were unable to see the inscriptions.

A police source said that of the 575 Muslim gravestones at the site, 500 had been vandalised.

Hundreds of thousands of Muslim soldiers from France's African colonies fought during World War One and tens of thousands were killed. France is now home to Europe's biggest Muslim community.

Midhat Cehajic