The person behind a shooting that killed at least eight people at a high school and home in western Canada has been identified, as the country mourns one of the worst mass killings in its history.
Jesse Van Rootselaar, 18, reportedly had a history of contacts with police over mental health problems.
Police said the victims included a teacher, 39, and five pupils aged between 12 and 13, who were found dead inside a high school in the rural town of Tumbler Ridge in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in British Columbia. Another person died on the way to hospital after the shooting on Tuesday, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said.
Two more people, identified as Jesse's mother and stepbrother, were found dead at the home. Jesse was found dead from what appeared to be a self-inflicted wound.
Prime Minister Mark Carney promised Canadians would get through what he described as a “terrible” event. He postponed a planned defence announcement in Halifax and subsequent trip to Germany for the Munich Security Conference, a representative said.
"We will get through this, we will learn from this,” Mr Carney said as he faced the media, at one point looking close to tears.
Tumbler Ridge is about 1,200km by road north of Vancouver and has a population of about 2,500.
The town's Mayor, Darryl Krakowka, told Canadian broadcaster CBC: "I will know every victim. I've been here 19 years and we're a small community. I don't call them residents, I call them family."
Police initially described the shooter as a “female in a dress with brown hair” but later referred to a “gunperson” amid unconfirmed reports that the suspect was transgender. Law enforcement agents said Jesse began transitioning to live as a female about six years ago.
Jesse was a high school dropout with an expired firearms licence, the CBC reported.
At least two were taken to hospital with serious or life-threatening injuries, and as many as 25 were being treated for non-life-threatening injuries, police said.
They said they did not believe there were any more suspects or a continuing threat to the public.
Police would release victims' names only when they had been fully identified, the CBC reported.
The attack brought to Canada the type of mass shooting more common in the neighbouring US. Canada has stricter gun laws than the US but Canadians can own firearms with a licence.
Britain's King Charles, who is also Canada's head of state, offered the royal family's condolences to those affected. Together with Queen Camilla, William and Kate, the Prince and Princess of Wales, he said they “stand in solidarity” with all Canadians after the tragedy.
The shooting is among the deadliest in Canadian history. In April 2020, a 51-year-old man disguised in a police uniform and driving a fake police car shot and killed 22 people in a 13-hour rampage in the Atlantic province of Nova Scotia, before police killed him at a petrol station about 90km from the site of his initial killings.
In Canada's worst school shooting, in December 1989, a gunman killed 14 female pupils and wounded 13 at the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal, before committing suicide.
Former prime minister Justin Trudeau's government had introduced restrictions on handgun ownership and assault-style weapons in 2020, partly in response to the mass shooting in Nova Scotia, as well as the Uvalde school shooting in Texas.
But attempts to ban certain types of rifles and shotguns were abandoned after opposition from farmers and hunters.
