Atwater Market destroyed by terrorists

Quebecois take responsibility

MONTREAL, Quebec (RWN) - A market built in 1931 and known for its architecture and place in the hearts of Montreal's citizens was destroyed late last night by an anti-Muslim terrorist group.

The Atwater Market, with a clock tower that dominated its section of the city, was reduced to little more than rubble around 11:15 p.m., fire officials said.

"We received a call from someone representing the Quebecois movement," Police Inspector Gaston Lameroux said, "claiming responsibility for the attack. The caller said that it was in response to a Muslim management group purchasing the market."

The attack on the Atwater is the seventh such attack on a Muslim-owned business this year.

"The Quebecois have changed their tactics," said Guy al-Mansur, the head of the Montreal Islamic Chamber of Commerce. "They've stopped killing women and children and have started targeting our businesses when they're vacant. They think that this way they will become folk heroes, but they won't. We know that the community, strongly Catholic as it is, will not support criminals."

The Quebecois have been fighting a battle against Islamic inroads into the province for more than 20 years. They have been buoyed during much of that time by a supportive populace that was nearly 90 percent Catholic. But an aggressive, privately funded program of paying Muslim families to move to Quebec has shifted the province's demographics to about 35 percent Muslim.

The shift has eroded some of the Quebecois' support, and the group had been less active until this spring, when they began a campaign against new business owners.

There have been calls for the majority-Catholic police force to step aside and allow an independent team of Canadian Mounted Police to look into the incidents, but that would require the province's governor, Jean-Luc Gaultier, to request them from the central government in Ottawa.

"I am convinced that our police forces are sufficient to investigate this matter," Gaultier said.


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