The Toronto Police Service said officers heard a firearm discharged in the area outside the consulate in the downtown core at 4:46 a.m., and a white sedan was seen leaving the scene. No injuries were reported.
The area was cordoned off while investigators examined the scene. More than a dozen police vehicles were at the scene.
The incident marks the second shooting outside the U.S. Consulate this year. The building was previously targeted on March 10 amid a series of attacks on synagogues and Jewish institutions that police later linked to an alleged gun-for-hire network.
The March 10 shooting, which the RCMP called a “national security incident,” inflicted no injuries but damaged the building.
A U.S. criminal complaint filed in May alleged that Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al-Saadi, an Iraqi national charged with terrorism-related offences in the United States, and others were behind the March 10 attack on the consulate and a shooting at a Toronto synagogue.
Toronto police Chief Myron Demkiw said at the press conference that young people were being hired to carry out the attacks via encrypted messaging apps, and were being required to film the attacks in order to receive payment.
Chief Supt. Joe Matthews said police had carried out several search warrants related to the shootings, and had made three arrests and recovered two firearms believed to be connected to the shootings.
