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I saw my brothers falling under the bullets of the shooter, says Mohamed Khabar, who was wounded in the shooting. And I heard the unbelievable screams of…
Quebec City always seems particularly cold on Jan. 29.
It certainly was that night four years ago when a gunman murdered six men at Ste-Foy’s Islamic Cultural Centre. Each year when the anniversary date arrives, events are organized to resist the city’s desolation in January and the cold terror of that night in 2017.
With COVID-19 restrictions in place this year, planning the fourth anniversary has been a challenge. This year’s memorial will be nothing like the last, where hundreds of people drew close in a warm room to share couscous and chickpeas, ginger juice and carrot cake, a meal intended to recall the Maghrebin, Guinean and Canadian roots of the victims and survivors of the attack. In a scene that seems almost impossible now, people traded stories over supper, embraced and shook hands, just weeks before COVID-19 changed everything.
On Jan. 29, 2017, six Muslim men were shot dead in a Québec City mosque. An armed white nationalist terrorist went on a shooting rampage in the Islamic Cultural Centre in Sainte-Foy, Québec, just after evening prayers. It remains the worst mass murder in a house of worship in Canada’s history.
A halal grocery store owner, a professor at Université Laval, three civil servants and a pharmacy worker were slain by Alexandre Bissonnette. These men originally came from Morocco, Algeria and Guinea. The murder victims were: Ibrahima Barry, 39; Mamadou Tanou Barry, 42; Khaled Belkacemi, 60; Aboubaker Thabti, 44; Abdelkrim Hassane, 41; and Azzedine Soufiane; 57. Nineteen other worshippers were injured, including Aymen Derbali, who was paralyzed in an attempt to stop Bissonnette.