LILLE (AFP)---About 1,000 people held a silent march
Monday in the Jewish section of a cemetery where some 50 gravestones were desecrated at the weekend in the northern French city of Lille.

Local religious and political leaders joined members of the Jewish
community in a show of solidarity after assailants knocked down 51 gravestones on the eve of the Jewish Passover holiday.

Pausing in front of the row of damaged gravestones, Rabbi Elie Dahan
recited the kaddish, the Jewish mourners’ prayer.

"We are not afraid, because we have known darker periods," he said.

Lille Mayor Martine Aubry, a leading French Socialist, said the silent
march would send the message that "democracy will not allow" such violence.

Catholic Archbishop Gerard Defois, who took part in the march, said leaders of all faiths were "filled with emotion" as they participated in the gathering.

Barbarism

"This is barbarism, there is no other word," said Amar Lasfar, the rector of the Lille-Sud mosque. "The war against racism, hatred, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism is far from over."

French President Jacques Chirac on Sunday ordered the government "to do everything possible to find the perpetrators of this infamy so that they are severely punished."

Some 40 investigators are taking part in the hunt for those responsible,
but the prosecutor’s office said Monday that no leads had turned up so far.

No graffiti was left on the 51 tombstones in the attack in the early hours of Sunday but "many were knocked down, some broken," said Lille prosecutor Philippe Lemaire.

The attack has been broadly condemned by all politicians, including
extreme-right presidential candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen who on Monday called it a "hateful act."

"Attacking cemeteries, of whatever religion, is unbearable and stupid,"
said Le Pen in an interview with France Info radio.

France has one of the biggest Jewish communities in the world, estimated at up to 600,000 people.