Jewish students in Sydney returned to school on Friday with a heightened security presence, days after police said they foiled a planned antisemitic attack in the city using a trailer filled with explosives.

The police said they were investigating whether “overseas actors” were involved in the vandalizing of synagogues and a day care center.

Australia was once viewed as a multicultural melting pot but a string of attacks against its Jewish community has cast doubt over this perception.

A Jewish school and two other properties in Sydney were sprayed with antisemitic slurs, authorities said on Thursday (January 30), a day after police said they had foiled an attack involving explosives in a suburb of the nation's biggest city.