By Ryan Patrick Jones
Shooting outside the U.S. Consulate in Toronto
TORONTO, March 10 (Reuters) - Canadian police boosted security around U.S. and Israeli diplomatic buildings on Tuesday after shots were fired at the U.S. consulate in Toronto, in what Prime Minister Mark Carney called a "reprehensible act."
Police say they were called to the consulate around 5:30 a.m. (0930 GMT), where they found spent shell casings and damage to the building. No one was injured.
Royal Canadian Mounted Police Chief Superintendent Chris Leather said security would be tightened at the U.S. and Israeli consulates in Toronto, Canada's most populous city, and at those countries' embassies in the capital Ottawa.
"These consulates deserve a heightened amount of vigilance and security at this time in the hopes that we can bring the temperature down," he told a press conference, saying the shooting would be probed as a national security incident.
Toronto Police Deputy Chief Frank Barredo said witness evidence indicates that two men exited a white SUV outside the consulate around 4:30 a.m., fired shots from a handgun at the front of the building and drove away.
"(This was) a reprehensible act of violence and attempt at intimidation," Carney said in a post on X, saying police would do all they could "to ensure the perpetrators of these violent acts are identified and brought to the full weight of justice."
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SYNAGOGUE SHOOTINGS
The consulate shooting follows three separate incidents last week in which gunshots were fired at synagogues in the Toronto area. No one was injured in those shootings.
Barredo said it was too early to draw a connection between the consulate shooting and those at the synagogues.
The U.S. State Department said in a statement that it was aware of the incident and was closely monitoring the situation in coordination with local law enforcement.
Separately, on Sunday, an improvised device exploded in Norway at the U.S. embassy in Oslo and police were still searching for a suspect. A possible link to the Iran war was among the lines of inquiry.
In New York City, two men have been charged with terrorism after throwing a homemade bomb at anti-Islam protesters over the weekend.
(Reporting by Caroline Stauffer and Bhargav Acharya in Toronto, Susan Heavey and Katharine Jackson in Washington and David Ljunggren in Ottawa; Editing by Bernadette Baum, Andrew Heavens and Sharon Singleton)