Ten people have been killed and at least 15 others injured after stabbings in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan.
The attacks occurred at multiple locations, with police investigating 13 crime scenes, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Saskatchewan said.
Officers are looking for two suspects, Damien Sanderson and Myles Sanderson, believed to be traveling in a black Nissan Rogue.
Some of the victims appeared to have been targeted, while others were randomly attacked, police said, adding that there may be other injured victims who were transported to various hospitals.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau described the incidents as “horrific and heartbreaking” while the province’s premier, Scott Moe, tweeted that he had no words to “adequately describe the pain and loss caused by this senseless violence”.
The Saskatchewan Health Authority said patients were being treated at multiple sites.
“A call for additional personnel has been launched to respond to the influx of injured people,” said the authorities’ spokeswoman, Anne Linemann.
Ambulance service spokesman Mark Oddan said two helicopters were dispatched from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and another from Regina, following the stabbing attacks on James Smith’s Cree Nation Indigenous community and in the nearby village of Weldon.
Rhonda Blackmore of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Saskatchewan said there were ‘multiple casualties in multiple locations’
The public was warned to take “appropriate precautions”.
“Do not leave a safe place. Exercise caution in allowing others to enter your residence. Do not approach suspicious people. Do not pick up hitchhikers,” police said.
The search area is packed as fans traveled to nearby Regina for a sold-out Canadian Football League game.
One of the teams scheduled to play, the Saskatchewan Roughriders, said additional security and law enforcement officers have been deployed to the game site, Mosaic Stadium.
The Regina Police Department said with the assistance of the RCMP they are working on multiple fronts to arrest the suspects and have ‘deployed additional public safety resources throughout the city, including the football game’ .
The stabbings were certain to reverberate across Canada, which is unaccustomed to episodes of mass violence more commonly seen across the southern border in the United States.
