An attack on Chad’s presidential palace left 18 assailants dead and six in custody, with one soldier killed and three wounded, state media reported Thursday.

The attack on Wednesday night occurred while Chadian President Mahamat Deby Itno was inside the palace, but authorities said the situation was quickly brought under control.

“The situation is completely under control. There is no fear,” Foreign Affairs Minister Abderaman Koulamallah said while surrounded by soldiers in a live Facebook broadcast filmed inside what appeared to be a quiet presidential palace late Wednesday.

In an interview with state TV, Koulamallah praised the vigilance of the palace guards, describing the attackers as disorganized and intoxicated by alcohol and drugs. When asked if the attack was terrorism, he said it was probably not, as the attackers were local youths from the capital, N’Djamena.

The attack occurred the same day as a visit by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who congratulated Deby Itno on reestablishing constitutional order.

In the immediate aftermath, rumors spread online that the attack was the work of Islamic militant group Boko Haram.

Boko Haram, which launched an insurgency more than a decade ago against Western education, seeks to establish Islamic law in Nigeria’s northeast. The insurgency has spread to neighboring West African countries including Cameroon, Niger and Chad.

Chad, a country of nearly 18 million people, has been reeling from political turmoil before and after a controversial presidential election that resulted in Deby Itno’s victory. He had led the country as interim president during the period of military rule that followed the death of his father in 2021.

At least 10 Jewish homes and businesses around Paris and a synagogue in the northern French city of Rouen have been defaced, according to police, with antisemitism being considered as a motive.

The acts of vandalism came as France marked 10 years since the Paris terrorist attacks that shook the country. Twelve people were killed at the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and five people were killed in the subsequent antisemitic attacks on a kosher supermarket in January 2015.

Buildings in the Parisian suburbs of Vincennes, Saint-Mandé and Fontenay-sous-Bois, many located near the Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket where the attacks took place a decade ago, were affected on Sunday and Monday, police said. A rabbi’s home and a synagogue in Rouen were also targeted with antisemitic messages and swastikas scrawled on the buildings.

The synagogue that was vandalized in Rouen was previously a target of attempted arson in May last year and was also sprayed with graffiti in December during Hanukkah. The messages found on the synagogue walls Monday called for Jewish people to be “gassed,” according to Natacha Ben Haïm, the president of the Israelite Religious Association of Rouen, who manages the synagogue.

Ben Haïm has filed a lawsuit against the perpetrators, who remain unknown, for “public provocation of hatred.”

In the country home to Europe’s largest Jewish community, the number of antisemitic incidents recorded in 2023 almost quadrupled in a year, with 1,676 cases reported, according to data from the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France.

“Discovering these tags in Rouen, it’s a double symbol, a symbol because it falls on the anniversary of the Hyper Cacher attack, and a symbol because it targets the Rouen synagogue, which was the victim of arson a few months ago,” said the president of Representative Council of Jewish institutions in France, Yonathan Arfi, on French radio RTL on Tuesday.

French interior minister Bruno Retailleau denounced the vandalism targeting the French Jewish community, and the growing antisemitism.

“The Jewish community represents less than 1% of the population, and is the victim of 57% of all anti-religious attacks,” Retailleau told French media Tuesday.

Italian journalist Cecilia Sala has arrived back in the country’s capital after being freed from an Iranian prison where she had spent weeks in detention.

Sala is a reporter for the Italian daily Il Foglio, which said the journalist landed in Rome on Wednesday afternoon.

“Our journalist landed in Ciampino (airport), after being released this morning from Evin prison in Tehran after 21 days of detention,” the newspaper posted on X, accompanied by a photo of the journalist on the runway.

Il Foglio also reported that Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Foreign Minister and Deputy Minister Antonio Tajani, as well as Sala’s parents, welcomed her at the Roman airport.

Il Foglio had previously said the journalist was held in Tehran’s Evin prison after being detained in mid-December while covering “a country she knows and loves.”

Earlier on Wednesday, Meloni’s office said: “The plane that is bringing journalist Cecilia Sala home took off a few minutes ago from Tehran.

“Thanks to intense work on diplomatic and intelligence channels, our compatriot has been released by the Iranian authorities and is returning to Italy,” the statement added.

Italian President Sergio Mattarella informed the journalist’s parents of the news during a phone call on Wednesday morning, according to the statement.

The Italian outlet Chora Media, where Sala also works, said that she had left Rome on December 12 “with a valid journalistic visa and the protections of a journalist on assignment.

“She conducted several interviews and produced three episodes of the Stories podcast for Chora News,” the media outlet said in late December, adding that it was making Sala’s detention public weeks later because her parents and Italian authorities had initially asked it to remain silent, hoping for a swift release.

Iranian state news agency IRNA, citing the Iranian Ministry of Culture, said last month that Sala was arrested after “violating the laws of the Islamic republic of Iran,” but Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said several days after her detention that “we still don’t know the charges.”

Iran’s regime is one of the most repressive in the world on press freedom, particularly cracking down on media rights after a wave of protests rocked the country in 2022.

Only four countries – North Korea, Afghanistan, Syria and Eritrea – have worse records on press freedom, according to an annual tally compiled by non-profit organization Reporters Without Borders.