Garda\u00ed are investigating an arson attack on the Islamic Cultural Centre in Co Limerick in the early hours of the morning.<\/p>\n
The centre, which is located in Dooradoyle, serves the Muslim community in Limerick.<\/p>\n
Emergency services attended the scene at around 1.30am and it took three units of Limerick Fire Service over half an hour to bring the blaze under control.<\/p>\n
Garda\u00ed have confirmed they received a report of an incident of “criminal damage by fire that occurred at a premises in the Dooradoyle area”.<\/p>\n
The fire is believed to have started in a bathroom of the mosque and Islamic cultural centre.<\/p>\n
It is understood a male approached the mosque and threw a petrol bomb through a window of the place of worship.<\/p>\n
A member of the community was at the mosque and raised the alarm.<\/p>\n
Nobody was injured in the incident.<\/p>\n
Fianna F\u00e1il councillor Abul Kalam Azad Talukder, the first Muslim local representative in Limerick, has condemned the arson attack saying it has left the community feeling insecure.<\/p>\n
“Dooradoyle is a longstanding peaceful area, incidents like this are rarely heard of,” he said.<\/p>\n
“That’s what makes this so shocking and devastating for both the Muslim community and Limerick as a whole.<\/p>\n
“We don’t know whether this was a case of organised crime or racial hate, but this kind of behavior is very uncommon in Limerick.<\/p>\n
“I know from experience that the majority of people in Limerick do not stand by these actions.”<\/p>\n
Additional reporting Barry Gallagher<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Garda\u00ed are investigating an arson attack on the Islamic Cultural Centre in Co Limerick in the early hours…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":55402,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-295076","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295076"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295076\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}