TORONTO (Anadolu) – Five people were injured in a mosque shooting Saturday in the Toronto area of Canada, according to police sources. A group of men, who had finished midnight prayers during the holy month of Ramadan, was randomly attacked in a drive-by shooting in the Scarborough district, said Toronto Police Department spokesperson David Rydzik. At least six shots were fired but it remains unknown how many suspects were involved in the shooting, he said. “We are unable to say whether the victims were targeted because of their religious beliefs,” said Rydzik. Meanwhile, Nadeem Sheikh, board member of the Scarborough Muslim Association said he is concerned about the shooting. He urged authorities to do their best to bring the perpetrators before authorities and said more steps should be taken to curb gun violence.

MUMBAI (Reuters) – Indian police arrested 14 people in connection with violent clashes between Hindus and Muslims during a Hindu religious procession in the country’s capital, New Delhi, police said in a tweet on Sunday. Six police officers and several others were injured on Saturday during scuffles that marred the procession at a festival in Jahangirpuri, a suburban section of New Delhi. “Remaining rioters are being identified for strict legal action,” the police said. There were no reported deaths from the incident. In recent weeks, religious clashes have broken out between the majority Hindu and minority Muslim communities during religious processions in several parts of the country. The rule of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party has emboldened hard-line religious groups in recent years to take up causes that they say defend the Hindu faith, although his party has denied any rise in communal tensions during Modi’s reign. Minority Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, who is part of Modi’s government, said in an interview published on Sunday that intolerance among religious communities was not worsening, while he played down recent incidents.

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PARIS (Reuters) – The party of far-left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon gave no voting instructions for the French presidential runoff after its internal consultations showed most people would abstain or vote blank on April 24, adding to the uncertainty over the outcome. President Emmanuel Macron and his far-right challenger Marine Le Pen are looking to attract voters who chose Melenchon, after he came third in the first round on April 10 with about 22% of the vote. With the electorate fragmented and undecided, the election will likely be won by the candidate who can reach beyond his or her camp to convince voters that the other option would be far worse. After the first round, Melenchon called on his supporters not to vote Le Pen, but he stopped short of advocating Macron and said his party would hold a public consultation to help guide the millions who backed him. According to results published on Sunday, about 215,000 party sympathizers who participated in that, more than 66% said they would abstain, leave their ballot paper blank or spoil it. Just over 33% said they would vote for Macron. The option of voting for Le Pen was not given to respondents. “The results are not an instruction to vote for anybody... everyone will conclude from this and vote as they see fit,” Melenchon’s campaign team wrote on its website.

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YANGON (AFP) – Families of detained Myanmar protesters had their hopes dashed Sunday after political prisoners were not included in some 1,600 people released by the junta to mark the Buddhist new year. The Southeast Asian country has been in turmoil since a military coup last year, which sparked huge protests and a deadly crackdown. State television announced that 1,619 prisoners, including 42 foreigners, had been “pardoned” and will be released to mark the new year – an annual tradition that last year saw 23,000 prisoners freed. A prisoner released from Yangon’s Insein prison told AFP that “political cases and protesters were not among those released”, with authorities only freeing criminals. Crowds in front of the prison slowly left on Sunday afternoon. More than 100 people had gathered hoping to be reunited with loved ones, AFP correspondents said. Among them was a woman waiting for her 19-year-old nephew, sentenced to three years imprisonment for incitement against the military. The country typically grants an annual amnesty to thousands of prisoners to mark the Buddhist New Year, usually a joyous holiday celebrated in many parts with water fights. But this year, with the bloody military crackdown on dissent, the streets in many major cities have been silent as people protest junta rule.

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NEW MEXICO (Reuters) – U.S. border authorities arrested 210,000 migrants attempting to cross the border with Mexico in March, the highest monthly total in two decades and underscoring challenges in the coming months for U.S. President Joe Biden. The March total is a 24% increase from the same month a year earlier when 169,000 migrants were picked up at the border, the start of a rise in migration that left thousands of unaccompanied children stuck in crowded border patrol stations for days while they awaited placement in overwhelmed government-run shelters. Biden, a Democrat who took office in January 2021, pledged to reverse many of the hardline immigration policies of his Republican predecessor, former President Donald Trump but has struggled both operationally and politically with high numbers of attempted crossings. Republicans, who hope to gain control of the U.S. Congress in the November 8 midterm elections, say Biden’s rollback of Trump-era policies has encouraged more illegal immigration. Biden officials have cautioned that migration could rise further after U.S. health officials said they will end a pandemic-era border order by May 23. The order, known as Title 42, allows asylum seekers and other migrants to be rapidly expelled to Mexico to prevent the spread of COVID-19. While more than half of the migrants encountered at the U.S.-Mexico border in recent months have been from the traditional sending countries of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, migrants have increasingly been arriving from more far-flung places, including Ukraine. U.S. officials are preparing for as many as 18,000 migrant encounters per day in the coming weeks, but are also readying for smaller increases.