[VIDEO] Ottawa Shooting: Institutions Locked Down; A Soldier and a Shooter Are Dead

Shots Fired Inside Canadian Parliament Building

One shooter was also killed, according to a person familiar with the matter. Ottawa police said that there were “possibly three” shooters and that shots had been fired at three separate locations in the capital, including inside Parliament.

Police were searching for the assailants as armed officers locked down the Canada’s Parliament building and Prime Minister Stephen Harper was moved out of the area. Mr. Harper canceled planned appearances in Toronto after the Ottawa shootings.

Tony Clement, a senior cabinet minister, tweeted that at least 30 shots were fired. “I’m safe with two colleagues but we’re still at risk,” he said.

The shooting left downtown Ottawa locked down, including the U.S. Embassy there, and provincial parliaments elsewhere in Canada tightened their security as heavily armed police combed the Canadian capital.

The war memorial in Ottawa, which honors Canadian forces’ service abroad, is the site of the Canadian government’s annual official Remembrance Day ceremony

Medics could be seen attending to a person on the ground near the memorial, which is close to Canada’s House of Commons, before the person was taken away in an ambulance. A witness said she heard four shots and saw a person running away with a rifle. 

Bank of Canada Gov. Stephen Poloz postponed the central bank’s planned quarterly policy news conference Wednesday morning because of the shooting.

The Ottawa police spokesman said the situation was active and officers were on the site.

The shots came at a time of heightened alert in Canada, after two soldiers were run over on Monday in Quebec by a Canadian man whom authorities were investigating for terror links.

A spokeswoman with the Sureté du Quebec, the provincial police force, said it was “too soon to say” whether the Ottawa shooting was in any way related to the incident Monday in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, where a “radicalized” Canadian struck the two soldiers, killing one and injuring the other. The suspect, identified as Martin Rouleau, fled the scene and was later shot and killed following a high-speed police chase….(read more)WSJ

 Paul Vieira at paul.vieira@wsj.com and Alistair MacDonald at alistair.macdonald@wsj.com

—Ben Dummett and Rita Trichur contributed to this article.

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