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13 killed in Canada shooting rampage, deadliest in 30 years

TORONTO (AP) — A man wearing a police uniform went on a shooting rampage in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia on Sunday, killing 13 people, in the deadliest such attack in the country in 30 years. Officials said the suspected shooter was also dead.

A police officer was among the dead. Several bodies were found inside and outside one home in the small, rural town of Portapique, about 60 miles north of Halifax. Overnight, police began advising residents of the town — already on lockdown because of the coronavirus pandemic — to lock their doors and stay in their basements. Several homes in the area were set on fire as well.

Police identified the man believed to be the shooter as Gabriel Wortman, 51, who was thought to live part-time in Portapique. Authorities said he disguised himself as a police officer in uniform at one point and made his car look like a Royal Canadian Mounted Police cruiser.

Wortman was arrested by the RCMP at a gas station in Enfield, just outside Halifax. Police later announced that he had died.

“This is one of the most senseless acts of violence in our province’s history,” said Nova Scotia Premier Stephen McNeil.

RCMP spokesman Daniel Brien confirmed that 13 people had been killed as had the shooter. He said he could not rule out that the death toll could still rise. Already, that makes it one of the worst shootings in Canadian history.

Mass shootings are relatively rare in Canada. The country overhauled its gun-control laws after the its worst mass shooting in 1989, when gunman Marc Lepine killed 14 women and himself at Montreal’s Ecole Polytechnique college. This weekend’s shooting is the deadliest since then. It is now illegal to possess an unregistered handgun or any kind of rapid-fire weapon in Canada.

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