Two people have died and nine have been injured in Canada after being hit by a pickup truck

Two men died on Monday after a van rammed pedestrians along a road in the city of Amquito the east of Quebecalthough a senior Canadian official He quickly ruled out that it was a terrorist attack. or a national security incident.

A provincial police spokeswoman said other nine people were injuredincluding two whose injuries are considered serious.

The Sargent Helene St-Pierre said the driver, a 38-year-old city resident, surrendered to police and was arrested on suspicion of a fatal hit and run.

A senior government official with knowledge of the matter said the incident was not related to terrorism or national security. The official spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

The authorities had not mentioned any reason.

St-Pierre said that the two people killed were men, one in his 60s and the other in his 70s. Of the injured, two suffered serious injuries and the other seven were being assessed, he said.

St-Pierre said investigators and crash reconstruction experts were working to establish the circumstances of the accident.

“Everything indicates that this is an isolated incident, that there is no longer any danger in the area and that there is only one suspect,” he said.

The incident occurred shortly after 3 p.m. local time on St-Benoit Boulevard in Amqui, a town about 350 kilometers northeast of Quebec City.

The regional health board confirmed that “code orange” had been declared at the Amqui hospital, which usually indicates a situation with a high number of victims.

Alain Gilbert, a truck driver, said that I was driving to Amqui when he saw several ambulances treating about four or maybe five people spread over a distance of about 500 meters.

He saw a police officer performing CPR on a person lying on the ground. He said there didn’t seem to be any children in the group.

Last month in Laval, Que., police said a man driving a city bus deliberately crashed into a daycare center, killing two children.

In 2021, a man used a van to kill four members of an immigrant family in London, Ontario, in what Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called a hate crime targeting Muslims.

In 2018, a man in a van rammed pedestrians in Toronto, killing 10 people. Alek Minassian was found guilty of 10 counts of first degree murder and 16 counts of attempted murder. Minassian, 28, told police he belonged to an online community of sexually frustrated men, some of whom planned attacks on people having sex.

(With AP information)

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