A Canadian police officer was shot dead in the Toronto metropolitan area

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Two other people were injured in shootings in separate locations by a man who was later arrested.

Just before 4.30pm, authorities issued a warning about an armed suspect who escaped from a shopping mall in Mississauga, Ontario, aboard a vehicle stolen after a shooting.

Moments later, police from nearby Milton said they had arrested the suspect following another shooting in that town.

"One person was pronounced dead at the scene and two others were taken to hospital," Milton police tweeted.

Global News and the public broadcaster CBC, citing anonymous police sources, said a police officer died at the scene of one of the shootings. 

The killing of a police officer is a rare occurrence in the country, which has instead been shaken by some incidents of mass violence in recent years, including the recent

stabbing in a remote Saskatchewan indigenous community which resulted in 10 deaths and 18 wounded.

A gunman disguised as a police officer killed 22 people in Nova Scotia in April 2020, two years after a van driver killed 11 pedestrians in Toronto.

And another shooter killed six worshipers in a Quebec City mosque in January 2017.

(GettyImages / archive)

Canada, police