MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — An Australian state committed more police to investigate a spate of antisemitic crimes, officials said on Tuesday after a childcare center was torched near a Sydney synagogue.

Australian police believe explosives found on Sydney’s outskirts were evidence of a deadly escalation in a campaign of antisemitic arson and graffiti crimes that has been waged in major cities for months.

SYDNEY: Australian authorities said Wednesday (j=Jan 29) they had seized explosives stored in a caravan in greater Sydney possibly intended for a "mass casualty" anti-Semitic attack.

Chris Minns, the premier of New South Wales, emphasized that the operation targeting these antisemitic crimes is “just getting started.”

and one person suffered burn injuries in the fire that was set at a Melbourne synagogue in December. Acting New South Police Wales Police Commissioner Peter Thurtell said Strike Force Pearl ...

Australian police are investigating whether explosives found in a caravan days ago in Sydney, the capital city of Australia's state of New South Wales (NSW), were intended to be used in an antisemitic attack.

The explosives located in a caravan could have caused a 'potential mass casualty event', authorities have said.

Australian city's Jewish community on edge after police — who kept the incident secret until it was leaked — say they're probing possible connections to recent antisemitic attacks

"That caravan contained an amount of explosives and some indication that those explosives might be used in some form of antisemitic attack," he told a news conference.

Sydney restaurateur Judith Lewis couldn’t save the mezuzah, a framed parchment inked with Hebrew prayers, that was hanging in her family’s café when arsonists set it alight in the early hours one Sunday in late October.

Australian authorities say they are investigating links to overseas actors as they crack down on antisemitic violence.

Australian detectives are investigating whether foreign actors are paying criminals to commit antisemitic attacks in the country