Canada PM Trudeau condemns violence after shots fired at Jewish schools

By Ismail Shakil

OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Thursday condemned recent violence as unacceptable after shots were fired at two Jewish schools in Montreal overnight and clashes between students at a university in the same city late on Wednesday.

Police on Thursday said they were investigating overnight shootings at two Jewish schools in Montreal. Both schools reported finding a bullet hole in their front doors Thursday morning, local media reported.

There were no injuries and it was not clear whether the incidents were linked.

On Wednesday, a violent altercation at Concordia University between people aligned with opposing sides of the conflict in Israel and Gaza resulted in injuries and an arrest, according to CBC News.

“I understand that people are so profoundly disturbed by what they see happening there,” Trudeau told reporters in the Montreal area on Thursday.

However, “violence, hate, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and scenes such as the ones we saw in Concordia University or shots fired at Jewish schools overnight – all of that is unacceptable,” he said.

In Toronto, police have reported hate crimes against Jews and Muslims had more than doubled the tally for all of 2022 in the three weeks after the initial Hamas attack on Oct. 7.

Israel says the attack by the Palestinian militant group Hamas killed an estimated 1,400 people and more than 240 were taken hostage. The ensuing Israeli bombardment of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip has killed more than 10,000 people, Palestinian health authorities say.

(This story has been refiled to add the dropped word ‘they’ in paragraph 2 and to remove an extra ‘the’ in paragraph 4)

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