Police are investigating whether a fire that damaged a historic Chinese temple in Sydney yesterday was started deliberately, a week before the Lunar New Year celebrations.
The blaze gutted the Sze Yup temple, a heritage-listed building that dates back to 1898, making it the oldest Chinese temple in Sydney. It was to have been the focal point of the city's Lunar New Year celebrations on Thursday.
The fire broke out in the temple, in the inner city suburb of Glebe, at around 1am, badly damaging one of the building's three halls. Fire crews took about four hours to put out the blaze.
Police are treating it as suspicious, with crime scene officers carrying out a forensic examination.
'Initial investigations suggest that entry to the temple might have been forced,' a spokesman for New South Wales police said.
'An exact cause or origin of the fire is yet to be established.'
Police declined to speculate, however, on whether the attack may have been ethnically motivated. One officer said there was 'not a scintilla of evidence' to suggest there were racial tensions in the area.
