A car also went up in flames in the attack on Peacehaven Community Mosque in East Sussex last night.
Masked men have set fire to a mosque in a shock attack that rocked a quiet seaside town. The front entrance to Peacehaven Community Mosque in East Sussex was damaged, alongside a vehicle parked outside, shortly before 10pm on Saturday. No one was injured in the incident, which Sussex Police said is being treated as a hate crime.
Detective Superintendent Karrie Bohanna said: “We understand the concerns this has caused within the community, and the impact that will be felt by the Muslim community as a result. There is already an increased police presence at the scene and there are also additional patrols taking place to provide reassurance at other places of worship across the county. Sussex Police takes a zero-tolerance approach to hate crime and there is no place for hate across the county.”
A burned out car was found in front of the mosque (Image: Adam Gerrard / Daily Mirror)
A worshipper at the mosque told The Sun: “There was an attack on the mosque, a few individuals came with balaclavas on and blew up a vehicle outside the mosque and set the front alight. It was a targeted attack.”
Emergency services were called to the scene at around 9:50pm on Saturday, with videos circulating on social media appearing to show two people in masks approaching the mosque entrance.
A volunteer at the religious building also told the BBC that two people had tried to enter through the door, before realising that it was locked. They said the two figures then poured a liquid near the entrance and around a car parked outside.
Sussex police have launched an arson investigation following the incident (Image: Adam Gerrard / Daily Mirror)
The volunteer added that two people inside the mosque managed to escape but “it could have been murder”.
Ms Bohanna described the police investigation into the hate crime as “fast-moving” and appealed to anyone with information or footage captured on CCTV, dashcam, doorbell or mobile phone to contact the police.
The incident comes just days after a terror attack outside a mosque in Manchester left two Jewish people dead on Thursday.
The suspect in Thursday’s attack, who was shot dead at the scene, was named as Jihad Al-Shamie, a 35-year-old British citizen of Syrian descent.
