A gunman opened fire and killed at least five people at an apartment building in the suburbs of Toronto, Canada, on Sunday evening before he was himself shot by police, according to reports.
The shooting took place in the city of Vaughan located in the Regional Municipality of York, just 30 kilometers north of Toronto.
York Regional Police Chief Jim MacSween told reporters that the motive behind the shooting was still unclear and needed to be determined.
"Horrendous scene," MacSween said. "Six deceased. One of them is the subject. The other five are victims."
He said a seventh person shot by the suspect was in the hospital and his condition was believed to be stable.
"We're in the process right now of doing notifications to those families, so at this point, I can't share any information on the victims or the subject," the police officer was quoted as saying in media reports.
MacSween said police were called to what he described as an active shooting at around 7:20 p.m. local time (0020 GMT).
“There was an engagement between the officers and a subject. After the engagement, the subject was deceased as well,” he said, providing no further details.
While Canada's gun homicide rate is less than one-fifth the rate in the neighboring United States, the nation has witnessed an upsurge in gun violence, which has prompted it to initiate a process to ban handguns.
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In April 2020, a gunman disguised as a police officer killed 22 people in the eastern province of Nova Scotia.
In September, a man killed 11 people and stabbed 18 others, mainly in an isolated indigenous community in Saskatchewan province.
Canada banned 1,500 types of military-grade or assault-style firearms in May 2020, days after the Nova Scotia shooting.