Smartphone (illustration)
Smartphone (illustration)Israel news photo: Flash 90

A French anti-racism group on Tuesday officially launched a smartphone application designed to speed up the removal of racist graffiti, following its decision to do so last month.

The app allows users to take photos of offensive tags, geo-locate them and send a message to the local authorities responsible for removing them via the group Licra, the International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism.

"You can't fight racism and anti-Semitism in the 21st century as we did in the past," Licra president Alain Jakubowicz said as the app became available for download.

Anti-Semitism in France has reached alarming heights within recent years most notably due to the 2012 killings by Islamist extremist Mohamed Merah of three Jews in a school in Toulouse and of three French soldiers.

Since the incident there has been a stark increase in both verbal and physical attacks against the French Jewish community,

According to a report by the French Jewish community, France saw an increase of 58 percent in anti-Semitic incidents in 2012 compared to the previous year.

The report released in February by the SPCJ showed that 614 anti-Semitic acts were documented in the republic last year compared to 389 in 2011.