French Police at Synagogue Shooting
French Police at Synagogue ShootingReuters

Two Paris synagogues have received threatening letters in recent days, but police have made no link with Monday's terror attack on the Otzar HaTorah Jewish day school in Toulouse.

“You are the people of Satan, Hell is waiting for you,” was the message received by one synagogue over the weekend, and the other on Monday morning. Paris police have opened an investigation, sources told the AFP news agency.

However, police still have not linked the letters to a murderous attack that killed 30-year-old Rabbi Yonatan Sandler of Kiryat Yovel, his sons Aryeh, 6, and Gavriel, 3 and 8-year-old Miriam Monsonegro, the daughter of the school's principal. A fifth victim, an unnamed 17-year-old boy, is reported in critical condition.

The gunman arrived at the school on a motorbike as children were entering the building for class. He opened fire on the crowd and then charged on to the school grounds, shooting Sandler, his sons, and the principal's daughter before making his escape.

A police source noted that the gun, later found near the scene of the crime, was the same one used in two separate shootings last week.

Three soldiers were shot to death – two died instantly, and the third hours later – by a black-clad man wearing a motorcycle helmet last Thursday. The murders took place in the southwestern city of Montauban, (50 kilometers) 31 miles from Toulouse, according to the French Defense Ministry. The soldiers, who belonged to the 17th parachute regiment stationed locally, had been standing in the  commercial center when the man approached them, pulled a gun and began firing.

Two of the three soldiers who were shot were Muslims; all were of North African and Caribbean origin, according to a report published by The Guardian.

The previous Sunday, also in a suburb of Toulouse, a man on a scooter murdered an off-duty soldier, a Muslim member of the 1st Parachute Regiment, firing at point-blank range.