Shots fired at 2 Jewish schools in Montreal: police
Shooters targeted two Jewish schools in Montreal Thursday in anti-Semitic attacks.
No one was killed or injured.
Montreal police say the first shooting occurred around 8:20 am, which is when employees at the Talmud Torah Elementary School observed that a bullet had hit the school’s door.
That incident was quickly followed by another when another bullet hole was found on the door of the Yeshiva Gedola Merkaz Hatorah school at 8:50 am.
According to the Montreal Gazette, police have established perimeters around both schools, canine units are on-scene and investigators are looking at the footage from surveillance cameras.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Quebec Premier François Legault both condemned the incidents, the Gazette reported.
“I want to be very clear: We condemn this antisemitic violence in the strongest possible terms,” Trudeau said at a news conference in Montreal where Legault was also in attendance.
“It’s unacceptable, it’s tolerance zero,” Legault said while declaring, “We don’t want hatred and violence in Quebec and we won’t tolerate this. The message must be clear: I understand that we’re seeing horrible scenes on TV, but we have to at a certain point be able to talk to one another calmly.”
Montreal has a large Jewish community that has been a vital part of the city for over a century.
But demonstrations inspired by the Mideast war have been often rabidly anti-Semitic in the city, with Montreal Imam Adil Charkaoui recently leading a public prayer for the extermination of the “Zionist aggressors.”
“Allah, count every one of them, and kill them all, and do not exempt even one of them,” he said in Arabic. An enthusiastic crowd cheered their support to his words.
The event was the Oct. 28 “Stop the Genocide in Gaza” rally — organized by the Palestinian Youth Movement, a group that continues to celebrate the Oct. 7 terrorist invasion of Israel and the murder of unarmed women and children.
Trudeau has been advocating for a “humanitarian pause” in the Mideast war while attempting to walk a diplomatic tightrope that supports Israel without angering pro-Palestinian protesters.
“Canadian Muslims, Arabs, and Palestinians are worried about their loved ones, their rights, and their safety. When I met with @AmiraElghawaby yesterday, we spoke about these fears and the work we must continue to do together to combat Islamophobia and all forms of hatred,” he wrote on X.