Montreal, Canada – A Homemade Bomb Exploded Tusday At A Jewish Center.

Montreal, Canada – A homemade bomb that exploded at the entrance to a Jewish community centre in Snowdon late Tuesday has some members of Montreal’s Jewish community demanding police set up a permanent hate-crimes squad.

Police were called at 11:15 p.m. Tuesday by employees of the YM-YWHA Ben Weider Jewish Community Centre, also known as the Snowdon Y, who heard an explosion at the facility’s main entrance on Westbury Ave.

No one was injured in the blast, no damage occurred to the building, and no threats or claims of responsibility have been reported, police said.

But Joachim Normand, executive director of the Canadian Jewish Congress, Quebec Region, said the incident has shaken the community.

“We are stunned at this appalling attack on a Jewish community institution, which is doubly offensive because once again this attack comes as Jews celebrate Passover,” he said Wednesday. Normand said the incident brings back painful memories of the firebombing of the Skver-Toldos Jewish Boys School in Outremont on Sept. 2, and the firebombing of the United Talmud Torahs school in St. Laurent on April 5, 2004. There was extensive damage in both those attacks, but no injuries.