Quote:
OTTAWA, Ontario - Tragedy and terror struck Canada's capital city Wednesday as a gunman shot a soldier standing guard at the country's National War Memorial before being killed later in a shootout, putting Ottawa's downtown on lockdown and sending terrified government members and employees scrambling for safety.
Law enforcement and U.S. Government sources told CBS News the suspect was Michael Abdul Zehaf Bibeau, born in Canada in 1982. One source says he sometime dropped the name Michael and went by Abdul Zehaf Bibeau. At other times he apparently dropped the Abdul.
The soldier was later pronounced dead from his wounds. Officials are withholding the soldier's name pending family notification.
Ottawa police spokesman Chuck Benoit said two or three gunmen may have been involved in the attack. Gilles Michaud, assistant commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, called it a "dynamic, unfolding situation."
No motives for the shootings have been revealed yet, but the incidents happened one day after two other soldiers -- one of whom later died -- were run over by a car driven by a recent Muslim convert and jihadist sympathizer whom police also shot and killed.
The series of incidents in Ottawa began shortly before 10 a.m., when the soldier was shot.Emergency personnel tend to a soldier shot at the National Memorial near Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Wednesday Oct. 22, 2014.
Witnesses said the soldier was gunned down by a man dressed all in black with a scarf over his face.
"I looked out the window and saw a shooter, a man dressed all in black with a kerchief over his nose and mouth and something over his head as well, holding a rifle and shooting an honor guard in front of the cenotaph point-blank, twice," Tony Zobl, 35, told the Canadian Press news agency.
Zobl said he witnessed the incident from his fourth-floor window directly above the National War Memorial, a 70-foot, arched granite cenotaph, or tomb, with bronze sculptures commemorating World War I.
"The honor guard dropped to the ground, and the shooter kind of raised his arms in triumph holding the rifle," Zobl said.
Zobl and other witnesses said the gunman then ran up the street toward Parliament Hill, and later entered the main building there, where dozens of shots rang out.
*snip*
Canada had raised its domestic terror threat level from low to medium Tuesday because of "an increase in general chatter from radical Islamist organizations," said Jean-Christophe de Le Rue, a spokesman for the public safety minister.
IMHO, we are at war. And it is now on our own soil. I am afraid it will take more of these events however before those living in their contrived utopia to acknowledge that fact.
