An "absolute tragedy" was only "narrowly avoided", says France's interim Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, during a visit to a synagogue in La Grande-Motte, in the south of the country, where fires were started triggering an explosion that injured a police officer. "The assailant was extremely determined and that if the synagogue had been full of worshippers at that time, if people had got out of the building in the first few minutes, there would probably have been casualties," Attal says. Authorities said the incident was being treated as a potential terror attack and "all means" were being deployed to find the perpetrator. IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES