Bombing at Ontario Indian Restaurant Leaves 15 Injured

MISSISSAUGA, Ontario — Two people are thought to be behind the bombing of an Indian restaurant outside Toronto on Thursday night that wounded 15 people, three of them critically, officials said.

The blast happened around 10:30 p.m. at the Bombay Bhel restaurant in Mississauga, a sprawling city just west of Toronto. Sgt. Matt Bertram of the Peel Regional Police said the assailants had entered the restaurant and put down what appeared to be a pail or a paint can, which then detonated as the two fled down the street.

Rafael Concaceicao, a student from São Paulo, Brazil, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. that he was on the patio of a nearby restaurant when he heard the explosion at Bombay Bhel. He rushed to help, he said.

“Many people were screaming,” he told the broadcaster. “They were trying to run out from the restaurant. There was a guy with glass inside his eyes. Many people were bleeding so much.”

Chief Jennifer Evans of the Peel police called the bombing “horrendous” on Friday, but she said there was no indication that it was related to terrorism or a hate crime.

Two suspects were seen fleeing the restaurant in a vehicle, she said, making an appeal to the public for any information, including photographs or videos of the scene.

The three people who had been critically hurt were in stable condition Friday, Evans said. A majority of those with less serious injuries were treated at hospitals and released, police said.

The attack at the restaurant occurred as two birthday parties with children present were being held there, Evans said, although no children were hurt.

The bombing comes just a month after the driver of a van plowed into pedestrians in Toronto, killing 10 people and injuring 14 more. The suspect in that attack, Alek Minassian, intentionally struck the victims in what was likely to count as Canada’s deadliest vehicular assault, the police said.

Bertram said that the suspects in Thursday’s attack were both light-skinned men who wore hoodies pulled over their heads, as well as face coverings. A police canine unit and SWAT team tried to track them, “but we didn’t come up with anybody,” he said.

The bomb, which the police described as an improvised explosive device, was filled with “projectable objects,” Bertram said.

The police released a photo of the suspects, and officials were examining video evidence and interviewing witnesses to try to find them. The police did not yet have a motive for the attack but said they had no reason to suspect terrorism or a hate crime. Mississauga, on Lake Ontario, is a city of more than 700,000 people. It has a large immigrant population and is the sixth-largest municipality in Canada.

The restaurant is at the corner of a low-rise mall that takes up a suburban block, at one of the city’s main intersections. The area was sealed after the explosion. Photos posted on social media showed armed police officers at the scene with sniffer dogs, and television footage showed an injured woman limping away from the restaurant after the blast.

Hurontario Street, where the restaurant is located, is the main thoroughfare of Mississauga, which is rapidly transforming from a sleepy suburban area into an urban center, with new condominiums rising near the site of the blast.

Bonnie Crombie, the mayor of Mississauga, sent her condolences to the wounded.

“This is not the Mississauga I know,” she said.