Police on Thursday arrested 16 minors for carrying out an arson attack on a historic church in northern Israel, media reports said.The 16 minors were arrested and taken in for questioning, according to a statement by Israeli police spokesperson Micky Rosenfeld.The youths were known to police on account of their prior criminal activities, EFE news agency quoted the Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot as saying.Rosenfeld earlier said a blaze broke out around 3.30 a.m. at the Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes at Tabgha on the Sea of Galilee.The fire caused extensive damage to an office for pilgrims, a meeting room and a souvenir shop, Xinhua news agency quoted the police spokesperson as saying.The church was built on the site of 4th and 5th century churches which commemorate what faithful Christians revere as Jesus's miraculous feeding of five thousand people with five loaves of bread and two fish.
A Hebrew graffiti spray-painted on a wall of the church led police to suspect that the fire was deliberately instigated. The graffiti was taken from a passage in the Jewish prayer book, reading "the false gods will be eliminated".A Catholic Church spokesperson in Jerusalem, Wadie Abu Nassar, went to the site to inspect the vandalism, a type of crime that has increased against Christian places of worship in Israel and Palestine in recent years, and thought to be the work of radical Jewish groups.According to the Rabbis for Human Rights group, an Israeli rights watchdog, there have been 43 hate crime attacks against holy sites since 2009, including cemeteries, mosques, churches and monasteries, in Israel, the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem."We are grateful for the efforts of the Israeli authorities, but we hope there would be consequences. A detention is not enough. It's good that there is an arrest, but would there be a punishment? We will follow the case closely because we believe that the time has come that the State of Israel treats these issues seriously," Abu Nassar said.