MARSEILLE, France (Armenews.com) — The Sahak Mesrop Cultural Center on the grounds of the Armenian Church on avenue du Prado in Marseille was the target of gunfire on Sunday, January 24 at 6:40 p.m. Several police teams were sent to the premises in the aftermath. The gunshot shattered the window in the center of the second floor, while a piano rehearsal was being held. No one was injured. But the musician who was present on the scene at the time of the shooting as well as the president of the cultural center filed a complaint with the police.
This shooting comes after a series of attacks in France and in the world against the Armenians. In addition to the defacing of a number statues, including that of Komitas at the end of August in Paris or that against the genocide memorial in Décines on November 4, French people of Armenian origin were the target of manhunts in the streets of Décines-Charpieu, near Lyon last July, and at the end of October in Viennes (Isère) and Dijon (Côte-d’Or), against the backdrop of the ethnic cleansing operation led by Turkey and Azerbaijan against the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh.
The ultra-nationalist Turkish group Les Loups Gris, implicated in these acts against the Armenian community in France, was dissolved in early November following these events.
Similar abuses were also observed during the same period in Berlin and San Francisco.
The Prado Cultural Center is also the headquarters of CCAF South, the umbrella organization for French-Armenian entities. It was the logistics hub for humanitarian aid from Marseille and the south of the country to Armenia during the last war.
