At least one gunman entered Canada’s Parliament buildings yesterday and many shots were fired just outside the room where Prime Minister Stephen Harper was addressing a meeting of legislators.
Harper was safely removed from the building but Parliament was locked down. Eyewitnesses said at least 30 shots were fired in dramatic scenes in the heart of the Canadian capital.
“PM Harper was addressing caucus, then a huge boom, followed by rat-a-tat shots. We all scattered. It was clearly right outside our caucus door,” Treasury Board Minister Tony Clement said.
Shots were fired just outside the room where PM Harper was addressing a meeting
A spokesman for Harper said: “While the Prime Minister stated that facts are still being gathered, he condemned this despicable attack.”
The suspected gunman was shot dead inside the Parliament building, Ottawa police said.
Minutes before the shooting there, a soldier had been shot and fatally wounded at the nearby National War Memorial in Ottawa.
But the incidents, shocking in Canada’s normally tranquil capital, were not over.
Ottawa police were searching for more suspects near the war memorial in central Ottawa, and on nearby Parliament Hill, a police spokesman said. Residents were warned to stay away from downtown Ottawa.
Dramatic video footage posted by the Globe and Mail newspaper showed police with guns drawn inside the main parliament building. At least a dozen loud bangs can be heard on the clip, echoing through the hallway.
Veterans Affairs Minister Julian Fantino, a former policeman, told the Toronto Sun that parliament’s head of security, Sergeant-at-Arms Kevin Vickers, shot dead a suspected gunman.
Armed police officers guard access to Parliament Hill following a shooting incident in Ottawa yesterday. Photo: Reuters“All the details are not in, but the sergeant-at-arms, a former Mountie, is the one that engaged the gunman, or one of them at least, and stopped this,” Fantino said.
Canadian Cabinet minister Jason Kenney said a guard in parliament buildings had also been wounded in the incident.
There was no word yet on the identity of any suspect or suspects or of any motive for the shooting. It was also unclear whether there was any connection to an attack on Monday when an Islamic convert ran down two Canadian soldiers with his car, killing one, near Montreal, before being shot dead by police in the first fatal attack on Canadian soil tied to Islamic militants.
Canada announced this month it was joining the battle against Islamic State fighters who have taken over parts of Iraq and Syria.
The attacks took place as the Canadian government prepared to boost the powers of its spy agency, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. Public Safety Minister Stephen Blaney said last Thursday the new legislation would let the agency track and investigate potential terrorists when they travel abroad and ultimately prosecute them.
As the drama in Ottawa unfolded, police in dark bulletproof vests and carrying automatic rifles flooded the streets near Parliament.