MONTREAL — Two Kosher restaurants as well as a private home in Montreal were fire bombed over the weekend.
On Friday, Café Shalom was hit by two incendiary devices, causing approximately $15,000 worth of damage, police said; the next day, a private home in Côte-St-Luc was attacked in a similar fashion. Then, on Sunday, a Molotov cocktail was thrown through the window at Chops restaurant on Queen Mary Road at approximately 12:40 a.m. No one was injured.
The owner of Chops restaurant told the Montreal Gazette he is offering a $20,000 reward leading to the arrests of the suspects behind the attack. “We want to bring these people to justice,” said Ouri Ohayon, owner. “This should be treated as an attempted murder,” he added. “There were about 30 people in the restaurant at the time. My staff rushed to put out the fire.”
There has been some speculation that the incidents may have been hate crimes against Jewish Montrealers, but local police spokesman Simon Delorme said there’s no evidence the attacks were aimed at one community in particular.
