France arrests suspect in Brussels Jewish museum shooting

French police have arrested a 29-year-old man suspected of involvement in the shooting deaths last weekend of three people at the Jewish Museum in Brussels, an attack that stoked fears of growing anti-Semitic violence in Europe.

Mehdi Nemmouche, a French citizen, was detained in the southern French city of Marseille on Friday and had a Kalashnikov assault rifle and another gun with him, a French police source said on Sunday. Nemmouche is from the northern city of Roubaix and spent time in jail in 2012.

French media reported that he was suspected of having stayed in Syria with Islamist jihadist groups last year. Islamist insurgents are playing a major part in a three-year-old uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.