ANNECY, France (AP) -- Fire damaged a mosque and destroyed a Muslim prayer hall before dawn Friday in southeastern France, and police suspected arson in both.
Fire crews extinguished the fire at the mosque in Annecy before it engulfed the entire building. The prayer hall in the Annecy suburb of Seynod was destroyed in the other fire.
Police suspect the fires were started deliberately. There were no immediate claims of responsibility.
The fires were condemned as ``racist aggression'' by the French Council of the Muslim Faith, a body set up at the government's urging to represent France's estimated 5 million Muslims.
About 7 percent of France's 60 million people are Muslims, Jews make up 1 percent of the population.
In the past, Jewish schools, temples and cemeteries have been hit in anti-Semitic attacks that peaked in 2002 when a Marseille synagogue was deliberately burned to the ground.
On Nov. 15, a fire destroyed part of a suburban Jewish school in what France's interior minister said was likely an anti-Semitic act.
Many Muslims immigrated from France's former North African colonies after World War II, working in factories and living in suburbs now corroded by unemployment and crime.
