Canada parliament attacked near where PM Harper was speaking

OTTAWA: Canada´s capital was jolted on Wednesday by the fatal shooting of a soldier and an attack on the parliament building in which gunshots were fired outside a room where Prime Minister Stephen Harper was speaking.

The gunman in the parliament building was shot dead, and Harper was safely removed.

Canadian police said they could not "at this point" confirm whether the man who shot dead the soldier, who was guarding the National War Memorial in central Ottawa, was the same person who shortly afterwards attacked the nearby the parliament building.

Witnesses said at least 30 shots were fired after a gunman entered the parliament building and was pursued by police.

The assault came very near the room where Harper was meeting with members of his Conservative party, a government minister said.

"PM (Harper) was addressing caucus, then a huge boom, followed by rat-a-tat shots. We all scattered. It was clearly right outside our caucus door," Treasury Board Minister Tony
Clement told Reuters.

The incident, shocking in Canada´s normally tranquil capital, was not over.Parliament and buildings in downtown remained on lockdown.

Harper stressed that government and parliament should continue its work, a spokesman said. "While the prime minister stated that facts are still being gathered, he condemned this despicable attack," the spokesman said.

Police said that an operation was under way to make parliament safe and they were still in the middle of an active investigation."It caught us by surprise... If we had known that this was coming, we would have been able to disrupt it," Gilles Michaud, assistant commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, (RCMP) told a news conference.