Toronto police announced Saturday local time that they have launched a search for an at-large gunman who killed two people and wounded five others in an area packed with shops and restaurants.

Toronto police said in a statement on platform X: 'Please avoid the area immediately and follow all police instructions.'

Later, police said in another post that they had 'secured the scene.'

Local media reported that the shooting occurred in an area where a salsa dance festival was taking place.

The incident comes shortly after a shooting in Montreal late last month that killed two people, including a police officer, by an attacker who was also killed by law enforcement.

In February, a shooting inside a school in the town of Tumbler Ridge in western Canada killed eight people, including the gunwoman's mother and half-brother, and wounded 27 others, before the shooter took her own life.

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