Four Mounties murdered on stake-out of cannabis farm

Canada was in mourning yesterday after four Mounties officers were shot dead by a gunman as they investigated an illegal marijuana farm in remote northern Alberta.

It was the deadliest incident for Canadian law enforcement in 120 years, and an especial shock for a country long convinced that it was exempt from the kind of wanton violence familiar in the United States.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officers, armed only with handguns, are understood to have begun the stake-out of the farm, near the hamlet of Rochfort Bridge, late on Wednesday. The tiny settlement is some 80 miles north-west of Edmonton, centre of the oil and energy industry.

On Thursday afternoon they entered a large hut on the property - only to be ambushed by a gunman who shot them with a high-powered rifle. Reinforcements arrived and exchanged fire with the gunman.

As the gunfire subsided, a heavily armed RCMP unit finally entered the hut and found the bodies of their four comrades, along with that of their killer. "He just cut them down," a police spokesman said. The four dead Mounties were all young; one of them was a 29-year-old constable who joined the RCMP just two weeks earlier.

As news of the attack spread, the reaction was of consternation and horror. In the capital, Ottawa, Prime Minister Paul Martin called for a moment of silence as he addressed a convention of his ruling Liberal party - which faces a motion calling for the legalisation of marijuana. "Canadians are shocked by this brutality and join me in condemning the violent acts that brought about these deaths," Mr Martin said.

The gunman has been identified as James Roszko, the 46-year-old owner of the farm who had a long criminal record, including sexual assault and the use of illegal firearms. This has prompted questions why officers were not more heavily armed when they entered the farm.

"Four brave young members of the RCMP were killed in the line of duty," Bill Sweeney, the RCMP commander for Alberta, said. He added that the last comparable loss of police life in Canada was in 1885 during the Northwest Rebellion, when the indigenous Metis population tried unsuccessfully to set up an independent nation in what is now Saskatchewan.

The shootings have added fresh fuel to the debate in Canada over the legalisation of marijuana, and on the current efforts to crack down on illegal growing operations, or "grow-ops", especially in the empty west of the country.

The Ottawa parliament is already debating legislation to decriminalise marijuana. But Alberta's delegation to the Liberal convention wants to go much further and have marijuana made completely legal and sold over the counter like alcohol or cigarettes, with the tax revenue going to the federal government.

But Thursday's killings could generate a backlash. Tony Cannavino, the head of the Canadian Professional Police Association, said his group has lobbied for tougher laws to deal with grow-ops.

The Rochfort Bridge shootings proved that existing laws were insufficient deterrent to people intending to set up illegal but highly profitable marijuana farms.