A gunman who disguised as a Police officer has shot 16 persons dead in Canada.
The 12-hour rampage started late on Saturday and ended with a car chase.
Police said the suspect shot people at different locations in Nova Scotia, many of them randomly. He was killed in a confrontation with police.
He was reported to have been driving what looked like a police car.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau described the attack as “a terrible situation”, and Nova Scotia Premier Stephen McNeil told reporters this was “one of the most senseless acts of violence in our province’s history”.
Among the victims was a veteran female constable with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which also handles municipal and provincial law enforcement in the province.
Gun violence in Canada is far less frequent than in the neighboring United States, and weapons more strictly controlled, but the killings were the country’s worst-ever, exceeding the toll in 1989 when a gunman murdered 14 female students at Montreal’s Ecole Polytechnique.
“This is one of the most senseless acts of violence in our province’s history,” said Nova Scotia Premier Stephen McNeil.
Public broadcaster CBC quoted RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki as saying police know of at least 16 victims, besides the shooter.
“What has unfolded overnight and into this morning is incomprehensible and many families are experiencing the loss of a loved one,” Nova Scotia RCMP commanding officer, Assistant Commissioner Lee Bergerman, wrote on the force’s local Facebook page.
Bergerman said the dead included Constable Heidi Stevenson, a 23-year veteran of the force.
