Police in Toronto, Canada, said on Tuesday that hired gunmen appeared to be targeting Jewish sites in the city.
Gunfire and arson attacks have repeatedly hit synagogues and other Jewish sites in Toronto and other Canadian cities, without causing any fatalities.
The chief of the Toronto police, Myron Demkiw, said at a press conference that young people were being recruited through encrypted messaging apps to carry out attacks in the city, such as a shooting incident in March targeting the US consulate.
Demkiw described a “recurring and similar modus operandi, and that is criminals for hire through encrypted messaging apps.”
“Young people are hired to carry out attacks,” he said. “In order to get paid, they’re required to film their attacks. Who’s paying for this? This is what we are trying to determine.”
“It is clear that some of the people hiring these criminals want to create a sense of fear in our communities, including in the Jewish community,” he added.
Toronto Police Chief Superintendent Joseph Matthews said there were “multiple networks” that were “multi-layered.”
He said that investigators believe “the people that committed the shootings at the Jewish schools and the synagogues are involved in a similar scheme.”
“There’s multiple people recruiting multiple youth in each cell,” he said. “We just don’t know the scope of it.”
Matthews said the criminal networks appeared to be sharing firearms.
Police have recovered a 9mm handgun linked to six shootings, and a .45 caliber handgun linked to 21 shootings, he said.
The police officials did not provide details about specific attacks and much of the investigation remains confidential.
Last week, a Toronto police officer was shot and killed during an arrest linked to the shooting against the US consulate in Toronto in March.
The alleged mastermind behind the consulate shooting was Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al-Saadi, an Iranian operative, according to a criminal complaint filed in a New York court.
The Canadian police said they were working with the FBI, but did not mention Al-Saadi or any links to Iran.
Al-Saadi is an Iraqi-Iranian national with deep ties to the Iranian regime who allegedly orchestrated a terror campaign against Jewish, Israeli and American targets in the US, Europe and Canada, according to US federal prosecutors.
Investigators said Al-Saadi paid attackers to target the sites and required them to film the attacks for propaganda.
