A package bomb exploded Monday morning at the Jewish National Fund of Canada office in Calgary, lightly injuring the secretary who opened it, police said.
A “large portion of the device was still unexploded,” Brendan Kapuscinski, the police inspector in Calgary, said in an interview.
He called the bomb an “improvised explosive device,” which means that it was not manufactured.
The secretary was sent to a local hospital for treatment of burns to her hands and face.
The blast, which police described as more of a “flash,” also caused the evacuation of a day-care center in the city’s Jewish Center, which also houses the JNF offices.
The JNF is involved in fund raising for afforestation, soil reclamation and land development in Israel.
“I don’t know why we should be a target for terrorist attacks,” Avner Regev, the executive vice president of JNF of Canada, said in an interview from the group’s Montreal headquarters.
But the police inspector said there was “no reason to suggest that this is a terrorist” attack and that the initial criminal investigation was first getting under way.
The Jewish Center’s executive director, Joel Miller, reportedly said, “We have no indication of where the package came from, so we don’t know who was involved.”
Calgary, which has a population of 750,000, is home to about 7,000 Jews.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
