Since the most recent conflict started, Hezbollah has launched rockets into Israel, provoking counterattacks targeting Hezbollah positions that have been established in the hills around these usually quiet Christian agricultural villages along the border.

Merzouk’s killing blew the lid off years of simmering resentment because of the police treatment of black and Arab youth, the ghettoization of immigrants and their descendants and the general hopelessness among black and Arab youth who feel like second-class citizens in France.

Long before the earthquakes in February, the viability of the Christian community in Samandag had been under cultural and economic threat. Many from the city’s minority Christian community had already departed, seeking economic or educational opportunities elsewhere.

“The church of Odesa shares the pain of its inhabitants. The church is not a building; it is people,” said Archpriest Maximian Pogorelovskiy, a spokesperson for the Orthodox Diocese of Odesa.