PROVIDENCE — A teenager allegedly threw a Molotov cocktail outside a long-vacant Jewish temple in South Providence early yesterday, but the police caught him and two of his apparent accomplices.

The teens apparently intended to toss the Molotov cocktail into a vacant lot across the street from the temple in order to enjoy the sight of it shattering and flaming, but it was hastily cast aside onto the grass outside the temple when a police cruiser approached, the police said.

The flaming bottle flared up on the grass of the former home of Temple Beth El, at Broad and Glenham streets, but Patrolman Riggins Jones quickly snuffed out the flames with a fire extinguisher from the trunk of his cruiser.

The former temple apparently was not the target, and the incident apparently has no connection to Saturday’s attempted firebombing of a multifamily house in the Mount Hope neighborhood, where a representative of an Israeli educational group lived, the police said.

Two Molotov cocktails were hurled at the house, with one flying into the second-floor bedroom of Josef “Yossi” Knafo, 25, an Israeli national and a representative of the Jewish Agency of Israel, and the other bouncing off the house and landing on the sidewalk. The incendiary that landed inside failed to ignite, and the second incendiary scorched the house but otherwise did no damage.

Yesterday’s events began at about 12 a.m. as the youths walked on Prairie Avenue in South Providence, Deputy Police Chief Paul J. Kennedy related. A patrolman stopped them, inquired what they were up to and then let them go. Minutes later, they entered a house under renovation at 88 Bogman St., apparently through an unlocked side door, and decided to torch the house, Kennedy said.

They spray-painted the walls and tossed around the combustible contents of a container of adhesive remover, but they were flushed from the house when a cruiser rolled up. Another patrolman had seen a fourth teen standing outside, and he stopped to investigate.

The fourth teen at some point left the area, but three males identified as a 17-year-old from South Providence, a 15-year-old from the North End and a 17-year-old from Central Falls went three or four blocks west to the intersection of Broad and Glenham.

One still carried a can of adhesive remover and they took a bottle from a bag of trash hanging on a fence on Glenham, filled the bottle with the liquid and stuffed in a liquid-soaked wick made of newspaper. In an interview with the police, they said that they intended to throw the Molotov cocktail into the vacant lot.

Just after the wick was ignited, they saw a third patrolman, Jones, approaching in his cruiser.

“…They tossed the bottle behind them onto the synagogue lawn and ran,” the police said in a statement.

Kennedy commented, “The cops were all over them, but they still did their dirty deeds.”

Although he stopped to extinguish the fire, which charred the grass but caused no other damage, Jones saw the youths fleeing down Moore Street, chased them in his cruiser and arrested them, according to Kennedy.

The youths were charged with five counts: 5th-degree arson, of the grass; conspiracy to commit 5th-degree arson; possession or carrying of explosives or noxious substances with the intent to use them unlawfully against the person or property of another; breaking and entering without the consent of the owner, at 88 Bogman; and malicious damage to property, at 88 Bogman.

The youths were referred to Family Court, where a judge ordered that they be held at the Rhode Island Training School until a hearing scheduled for Monday.

The former synagogue, at 688 Broad St., is a brick structure built in 1911. The congregants of Temple Beth El built a new synagogue on Orchard Avenue, on the East Side, and moved there in the early 1950s. Another congregation used the building for a while but it still carries a plaque saying Temple Beth El.

The attempted firebombing Saturday remains under investigation by city, state and federal law agencies.

In a statement that referred to yesterday’s incident, Robert Trestan, eastern states civil-rights counsel for the Anti-Defamation League, said, “While there are some similarities to the weekend attack … no one should leap to any conclusions that the events are related or are clearly hate crimes.”

gsmith@projo.com