A 15-year-old boy has been arrested on suspicion of stabbing a Jewish man in the Swiss city of Zurich.

Police suspect antisemitism as a motive for the attack on Saturday night, which comes amid a rise in similar incidents across Europe.

The Swiss Organisation Of Jewish Communities said the 50-year-old victim is in hospital with serious injuries.

“Physical attacks on Jewish people in Switzerland are very rare,” the group said.

“The Jewish community has been spared from such life-threatening attacks for the past two decades.

“However, there has been a significant increase in such physical attacks since 7 October.”

The war between Israel and Hamas began on 7 October last year when the militant group stormed across southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and seizing around 250 hostages.

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Nearly five months later, an estimated 30,000 Palestinians have been killed and hundreds of thousands more are on the brink of famine in Gaza.

In the UK in February, the Community Security Trust said the number of antisemitic incidents reached an all-time high last year.

The charity recorded 4,103 antisemitic incidents in the UK in 2023, up from the previous annual record of 2,261 two years earlier.

It blamed the record on the “sheer volume of antisemitism perpetrated across the UK following Hamas’ attack on Israel on 7 October”.

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