OTTAWA: Police on Thursday killed a 24-year-old man suspected of plotting a terror attack targeting a Canadian urban centre during the rush hour, authorities said.
The suspect, with whom police were familiar from past terror investigations, was identified as Aaron Driver, CNN quoted Mike Cabana, Deputy Commissioner of Federal Policing for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) as saying.
Driver was killed on Wednesday in Strathroy, Ontario, at around 4:30 p.m. local time. Cabana said the police engaged Driver when he was entering a cab. Later, the suspect detonated an explosive device inside the cab, injuring the driver.
Police believe Driver was planning to stage an attack within 72 hours, Cabana noted.
FBI and RCMP had been monitoring Driver since at least 2014, well before he granted an interview to "The Toronto Star" using the name Harun Abdurahman. In the interview, he justified the 2014 attacks on Parliament Hill in Ottawa that left an unarmed soldier dead and he expressed support for Islamic State (IS) terrorist group, the report added.
Police arrested Driver in June 2015 but a court granted him a peace bond, requiring he maintain good behaviour for a certain period. He was being electronically monitored since then.
Recently, the RCMP received information from the FBI, including "a video of a man in the final stages of an explosives attack." The RCMP identified the man in the video as Driver.
In the video, a man in a black balaclava read something to the side of the camera. He invoked "the bodies of filthy French lying in the street" and said Canada had received many warnings to stay off Muslim lands and should discontinue its participation in the fight against IS.