TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) — A truck filled with natural gas crashed into a wall surrounding a synagogue on the Tunisian resort island of Djerba on Thursday, killing five people and injuring about 20, the official news agency reported.
The TAP agency qualified the blast as an "accident." The explosion killed the driver of the truck and four other people, including a police officer, the agency said.
Helicopters were mobilized to bring the injured to Djerba's regional hospital. They suffered from burns of varying degrees of seriousness.
Djerba is a popular tourist destination off the southeast coast of the North African nation. The ornate Ghriba synagogue, with its chandeliers, mosaics and arches, is a site of pilgrimage for Jews.
Security services and judicial authorities opened an investigation to find the causes of the blast.
As tensions have escalated in the Middle East, synagogues in Europe, notably in France, have been targeted by attacks. In the most serious case, a synagogue in the southern French city of Marseille was burned to the ground on March 31.