Two people were killed and six others wounded after gunfire erupted outside a wedding venue in the Canadian capital Ottawa on Saturday, according to authorities.
The shooting occurred in a parking lot at the Infinity Convention Centre in Gibford Drive near the city’s airport just before 10.30pm, Ottawa Police Service said in a statement.
The victims had been attending two weddings being held simultaneously at the venue.
On Sunday, the two deceased victims were identified as Said Mohamed Ali, 26, and Abdishakur Abdi-Dahir, 29, both of Toronto.
As of Monday, no arrests have been made, and no descriptions of the suspects were available.
It was unclear what condition the wounded survivors were in. Two of the injured were US citizens.
The Ottawa Police Service Homicide Unit appealed for surveillance, doorbell or dashcam footage from local residents and businesses.
“This is an active and ongoing investigation,” police said. “All investigative angles are being explored.”
Police at a wedding venue in Ottawa, Canada, where two guests were shot dead in a mass shooting on Saturday night— (CBC )
A witness who arrived at the venue to pick up a wedding guest told the AFP that around 20 shots were fired in the melee.
“It was chaos, there was no general direction of where people were running, it was just everywhere,” the witness, who was only identified by their first name Nico, told the AFP.
“It was rapid shots, and then there was screaming, and then there was a pause, and then there were more shots.”
An Ottawa police inspector told the AFP that there was no indication the shooting was a hate crime “related to race or religious beliefs”, but authorities were not ruling out the possibility.
The murders were the 11th and 12th so far in 2023 in Ottawa, police said.
Canada has experienced a significant increase in shooting deaths in recent years.
The government has responded by banning assault weapons and freezing sales of handguns.
