TWO PEOPLE HAVE died and at least four others have been seriously wounded in a shooting at a salsa festival in Toronto, Canada late on Saturday evening.

Police said that “there was an exchange of gunfire between two individuals, and two firearms were recovered.”

Over 13,000 people attended the Salsa on St. Clair Festival.

Toronto’s deputy police chief, Frank Barredo said that two men were pronounced dead, with four people transported to hospital with serious injuries. 

Barredo said that while police initially referred to an “active shooter”, this subsequently did not appear to be the case.

He also did “not rule out” the possibility of more than two people being involved in the shooting.

No arrests have been made so far.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said on X that he was “horrified by the shooting that has killed two people at the Salsa on St. Clair Festival in Toronto”.

Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow said she was “deeply disturbed and angry about this reckless and irresponsible act of violence right in the middle of a festival attended by families, children, seniors”.

Jason Ferda, who was attending the festival, told AFP he initially thought it was “fireworks.”

“I was scared, I left,” he said.

Another witness told local broadcaster CTV News that a state of panic washed over the crowd.

“Suddenly, everybody was running towards the stage, and everyone was like what’s going on and the police came and they stopped the music,” the bystander said.

“Everything happened so fast.”

The incident follows another shooting in Montreal late last month in which two people, including a police officer, were killed by an assailant who was then shot dead by law enforcement.

A school shooting in the small western mining town of Tumbler Ridge killed eight people in February, including the shooter’s mother and half-brother, and wounded 27 before she took her own life.