Pig heads, some with ‘Macron’ scrawled on them, found outside nine Paris mosques

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By Juliette Jabkhiro

PARIS (Reuters) – Pig heads appeared outside at least nine mosques in and around Paris on Tuesday, authorities said, with French President Emmanuel Macron’s name scrawled on five of them.

Authorities did not say who could be behind the attacks but pledged support for France’s Muslim population at a time of rising anti-Islamic sentiment. France has Europe’s largest population of Muslims, over 6 million, for whom eating pork is forbidden.

“I want our Muslim compatriots to be able to practice their faith in peace,” Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau told reporters. He said he could not rule out foreign interference to unsettle France as it faces a fiscal and political crisis.

“We can’t avoid drawing parallels with previous actions, which often took place at night and were proven to be acts of foreign interference,” he said.

He gave no further details, but France has accused Russia of trying to sow discord in the past. Three Serbians accused of links to a “foreign power” were arrested after synagogues and a Holocaust memorial were defaced with green paint in May.

The Paris prosecutor’s office said four pig heads were found outside Paris mosques and five on the capital’s outskirts.

A Paris police unit was investigating the incident for suspected incitement to hatred, aggravated by discrimination, the Paris prosecutor’s office said.

“It’s catastrophic and disappointing to see such things,” said Alim Burahee, president of a Paris mosque where a pig head was found around 5 am on Tuesday. “If they can do that, what else could they do?”

Racism is rising in France, according to a 2024 report from France’s human rights commission. There were 181 anti-Muslim acts recorded by the Interior Ministry between January and June 2025, an 81% rise on the same period in 2024.

Bassirou Camara, head of ADDAM, an association fighting discrimination against Muslims, told Reuters mosque-goers are increasingly fearful as insecurity and stigmatisation have been growing for months.

In June, after a Tunisian barber was shot dead by his neighbour, France’s anti-terror prosecutor’s office opened its first investigation into a murder inspired by far-right ideas.

In April, thousands protested after a Malian was stabbed to death in a mosque by an intruder who insulted Islam while filming the act.

(Reporting by Mathias de Rozario and Juliette Jabkhiro in Paris; additional reporting by Layli Foroudi; Editing by Gabriel Stargardter, Andrew Cawthorne and Timothy Heritage)