Canadian police announced in Langley, near Vancouver, that "several shootings" resulted in a number of victims in western Canada , and that they had arrested a suspect.
"There were a number of victims and several shootings," police spokeswoman Rebecca Barslow told AFP, but she did not specify whether the victims had died.
"There is a man under arrest," she added, noting that the police were investigating the possible involvement of other suspects.
According to Canadian media, the suspect is likely to have deliberately shot homeless people in the city.
An alert was sent out at about 06:15 local time (1315 GMT) to residents, stating "several crime scenes in downtown Langley," a city of about 130,000 people located about 40 kilometers southeast of Vancouver in British Columbia.
In this letter, the authorities indicated that they had "interacted with a suspect, without knowing whether others were involved, until this moment."
A second alert was sent out an hour later that said the suspect "no longer poses a threat", calling on residents to be vigilant.
The first alert message indicated that the suspect was a Caucasian man with dark hair, wearing a brown suit and a blue and green shirt with a red emblem on the right sleeve.
