Jerusalem: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Sunday offered Israel’s help to investigate Saturday’s shooting at a Jewish museum in Brussels, Belgium, that left four people dead, including an Israeli couple from Tel Aviv.
“I am very disturbed by the growing anti-Semitism in Europe. There must be zero tolerance for anti-Semitism toward Jews and their state,” Netanyahu was quoted by his bureau as telling his Belgian counterpart Elio Di Rupo over phone, Xinhua reported.
Netanyahu offered to assist the Belgian authorities in locating the perpetrators and bringing them to justice.
Di Rupo said he was shocked over the deaths and condemned “all manifestations of anti-Semitism.” He has sent his condolences to the families of the Israeli victims.
The Belgian authorities said a lone gunman entered the museum and opened fire, reportedly aiming at the victims’ heads, then fled by vehicle.
Israel’s foreign ministry identified the dead couple Sunday. A third victim was reportedly a volunteer at the Jewish museum in downtown Brussels, and a fourth one was identified as a young male employee at the museum, according to Belgian media.
Brussels is home to some 20,000 Jews, about half of the country’s Jewish community.
The incident, which the Belgian authorities said was likely a hate crime with anti-Semitic motives, has rattled Israel and Jewish communities across Europe.
Some Jewish leaders have drawn a comparison to a lethal shooting spree outside a religious Jewish school in Toulouse, France, in 2012 during which an Al Qaeda-inspired gunman killed four people.
Earlier Sunday, Netanyahu blamed anti-Israel incitement for inspiring the Brussels attack.