Jewish school in Montreal is fired upon, second time in days

A Jewish school in Montreal was fired on Sunday for the second time this week as tensions remain high in Canada over the Israel-Hamas war, police said.

Police spokeswoman Veronique Dubuc said no one was in Yeshiva Gedola when shots were heard around 5:00 am (1000 GMT), and there were no reported injuries.

Officers discovered bullet damage to the building’s facade and found cartridges on the ground, Dubuc said.

The incident took place only two days after that school and another Jewish school in Montreal, Canada’s second-largest city, were fired upon, also without casualties.

“The fact that people took the liberty to attack the same target more than once demonstrates the situation’s seriousness,” school spokesman Lionel Perez said during a press conference, adding that classes would continue as usual.

Earlier in the week, a Montreal synagogue suffered minor damage in a firebombing, and three students were injured when pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel groups clashed at the city’s Concordia University.

Both Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Francois Legault, the premier of French-speaking Quebec province, have condemned the violence.

“Let’s not import the hatred and violence that we see elsewhere in the world,” Legault posted on X, formerly Twitter, adding that “all effort will be made to find and punish those guilty.”

Montreal’s Mayor Valerie Plante condemned the “odious gesture” and urged residents to “absolutely fight anti-Semitism.”

“We will not accept Montreal being the scene of such acts,” she said on X.

Several countries around the word, notably in Europe, have seen attacks on Jewish targets amid the intense Israeli strikes on Gaza in response to the bloody October 7 attack by militants of the Palestinian group Hamas.

Some 1,200 people in Israel, most of them civilians, were killed that day, Israeli authorities say.

Health authorities in Gaza say more than 11,100 people, including many children, have died in Israel’s bombardment of the Palestinian territory.