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Gunmen opened fire in a mosque in the city of Quebec on Sunday night, killing six people and wounding eight others in what Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called a “terrorist attack on Muslims.”
Étienne Doyon, a spokesman for the Quebec police, told reporters at the scene that the attack on the mosque, the Islamic Cultural Center of Quebec, had occurred around 8 p.m. At a news conference early Monday the police confirmed the six fatalities and said that two suspects had been arrested.
The attack shook Canada, a country where mass shootings are uncommon, and came as the country has become known as a beacon for refugees fleeing warfare and terrorism in Muslim-majority nations.
Mr. Trudeau assailed what he called “this terrorist attack on Muslims in a center of worship and refuge.”
“It is heart-wrenching to see such senseless violence,” he said in a statement early Monday. “Diversity is our strength, and religious tolerance is a value that we, as Canadians, hold dear.”
On Twitter, Martin Coiteux, the minister of public safety in Quebec, said that “the police systems for dealing with terrorist acts have been activated” in the wake of the shooting. “Ensuring the safety of the population is our priority,” he wrote.
About 765,000 people live in the city of Quebec, and 6,760 of them identified themselves as Muslims during the last national census.
(by Jan Austen, New York Times JAN. 29, 2017)
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