Vandals daub swastikas on Jewish gravestones in Moldova

CHISINAU (Reuters) -Vandals daubed swastikas and other Nazi symbols and damaged more than 50 gravestones in the Jewish cemetery in Moldova's capital, officials said on Thursday.

Forensic experts and prosecutors on Thursday sealed off the cemetery in Chisinau, once a thriving centre of Jewish culture in the Russian empire. A criminal case was opened on grounds of desecration and inciting racial hatred but no further details were provided on the incident.

The cemetery was also vandalised in 2020, when 42 headstones were damaged and 30 daubed with paint.

Home to 200,000 Jews a century ago, Moldova now has about 5,000. A notorious anti-Jewish pogrom in Chisinau in 1903 killed 49 people, injured 600 and destroyed hundreds of Jewish homes and shops in the city.

(Reporting by Alexander Tanas, Writing by Ron Popeski; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)