Winnipeg mosque was likely shot at with pellet-style gun, police say

Winnipeg police believe the Rahma Islamic Centre attack this week likely involved a pellet-style gun.

On Wednesday around 11:30 p.m., police noticed freshly broken windows at the mosque on Watt Street. They learned suspects shot and threw unknown objects at the place of worship, breaking its windows.

Police said people also shouted racist remarks at worshippers and passersby in front of the Islamic centre earlier that day.

In an update Friday, police said its officers have continued investigating the suspected hate crime and have identified a potential second target location.

Officers are looking into damage at a home in the 600 block of Roberta Avenue caused around 10:15 p.m. Wednesday. Police said damage to the home’s windows also appears to have been caused by an airsoft, or pellet-style, gun.

“Due to the proximity and time frame of both incidents, investigators are attempting to determine if the incidents are related,” police said in a news release.

Police also renewed their plea for anyone with information, surveillance or dashcam footage to contact the Winnipeg Police Service.

Windows at the Rahma Islamic Centre were boarded up on Friday. Shattered glass still littered the ground near where the windows were broken.

Amjad Ahmed and Anas Askar told Global News they attend the centre “pretty often,” but neither were there during the incident.

Ahmed was working, and Askar said, despite usually praying at the centre twice daily, his mother told him not to go to the Wednesday night prayer, due to the storm.

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“It was just a couple of days before that we came here and the windows had the shades up, and it was just normal,” Ahmed said.

“So, seeing our windows shattered would be the last thing anyone (expects).”

Inside the mosque, Askar says there is no noticeable damage, but the mosque attendees no longer have the sense of safety they did before the alleged hate crime.

“They feel shaken up, because as a small community, you wouldn’t think that (these) things would happen to you,” Askar said.

“So, this thing happening to us, it could happen to so many people. It could happen to people individually. You don’t even have to be a huge community for something serious to happen to you — that definitely shook us.”

“Some people, who would be coming for prayers daily, might give a second thought on coming to the building, to the facility, to the mosque because of that incident, and so it is really sad.”

Steven Zhou, spokesperson for the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM), said this shooting in Winnipeg is indicative of a larger problem.

“It’s not every day that you have a mosque that is shot up in the way that it had been on Wednesday night, but I can say that it is pretty much now a literally everyday occurrence where some Muslim individual or gathering is accosted, threatened or attacked in some way coast to coast across Canada,” Zhou said.

The NCCM has received an increase in reports of violence and verbal threats against Muslims in the past six to eight weeks, according to Zhou. In one incident earlier this month, a man in a Halifax Costco told people to “get out of our country” and threatened multiple times to kill “every one of you.”

Zhou said policies must be revised to better protect Muslim people, and other minorities, and manage the hate.

In a statement posted on social media Thursday evening, Canadian Prime Minster Mark Carney condemned the Winnipeg incident, saying he was “deeply disturbed to learn of the shots fired at the Rahma Islamic Centre in Winnipeg.”

“This violent act of Islamophobia is appalling and has no place in Canada,” the prime minister said.

Carney said he is “grateful no one was injured.”