Police find more body parts in Paris park

French investigators on Tuesday found more human remains including a head in Paris' busy Buttes-Chaumont park, prosecutors said, after part of a woman's body was discovered the day before.

Published: 13 February 2023 16:47 CET
Updated: 14 February 2023 14:23 CET

Police find more body parts in Paris park

The body was found in the Parc des Buttes Chaumont in northern Paris. Photo by Christophe ARCHAMBAULT / AFP

Police had been combing the park in the French capital’s northeast for further evidence after park workers made the find on Monday afternoon, a source close to the investigation said.

Prosecutors said identification of the woman’s body “is still under way” after a lower part of the torso was discovered in a bag in a wooded area.

There was no immediate indication of how long the victim might have been dead, and the source close to the enquiry said an autopsy would be carried out.

A police source told AFP the remains bore a pair of blue jeans with a “floral decoration” on the thigh.

Paris criminal police have launched a homicide investigation.

Still closed on Tuesday as the search continued, the hilly Buttes-Chaumont park is a popular spot for families and joggers.

It was built during the major relandscaping of the French capital under
Napoleon III in the 19th century.

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The French Jewish community, the third largest in the world, has for months been on edge in the face of a growing number of attacks and desecrations of memorials.

“National police in Rouen neutralised early this morning an armed individual who clearly wanted to set fire to the city’s synagogue,” Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Police responded at 6.45 am to reports of “fire near the synagogue”, a police source said.

A source close to the case told AFP the man “was armed with a knife and an iron bar, he approached police, who fired. The individual died”.

“It is not only the Jewish community that is affected. It is the entire city of Rouen that is bruised and in shock,” Rouen Mayor Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol wrote on X.

He made clear there were no other victims other than the attacker.

Two separate investigations have been opened, one into the fire at the synagogue and another into the circumstances of the death of the individual killed by the police, Rouen prosecutors said.

Such an investigation by France’s police inspectorate general is automatic whenever an individual is killed by the police.

The man threatened a police officer with a knife and the latter used his service weapon, said the Rouen prosecutor.

The dead man was not immediately identified, a police source said.

Asked by AFP, the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office said that it is currently assessing whether it will take up the case.

France has the largest Jewish community of any country after Israel and the United States, as well as Europe’s largest Muslim community.

There have been tensions in France in the wake of the October 7th attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel, followed by the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

Red hand graffiti was painted onto France’s Holocaust Memorial earlier this week, prompted anger including from President Emmanuel Macron who condemned “odious anti-Semitism”.

“Attempting to burn a synagogue is an attempt to intimidate all Jews. Once again, there is an attempt to impose a climate of terror on the Jews of our country. Combating anti-Semitism means defending the Republic,” Yonathan Arfi, the president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF). wrote on X.

France was hit from 2015 by a spate of Islamist attacks that also hit Jewish targets. There have been isolated attacks in recent months and France’s security alert remains at its highest level.