Moscow summons Canada envoy over Russian embassy attacks in Ottawa

MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russia’s foreign ministry has summoned the Canadian ambassador and issued a protest over attacks on the Russian embassy in Ottawa, the ministry said on Monday.

It said an unknown person threw a Molotov cocktail – gasoline bomb – onto the grounds of the Russian embassy in Ottawa. It also said “aggressive” demonstrators had blocked an entrance to the consular section of the embassy.

A spokesperson for Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly said violence and vandalism are not acceptable, and relevant authorities were looking into the matter.

“We know that Canadians are shocked at the latest images coming out of Izium,” Joly spokesperson Adrien Blanchard said in a statement. “That is why we will not spare any effort to hold (Russian President Vladimir) Putin and his accomplices accountable for their war crimes.”

Ukrainian officials said last week that they had found 440 bodies in the woodlands near Izium, a town in northeastern Ukraine recaptured from Russian forces earlier in September during a counter-offensive in the Kharkiv region. They said most of the dead were civilians.

The Kremlin on Monday rejected allegations that Russian forces had committed war crimes in Ukraine’s Kharkiv province as a “lie”.

(Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Hugh Lawson and Grant McCool)