Witness says he saw the van and that the driver appeared to have been targeting people The incident occurred as Cabinet ministers from the G7 countries were gathered in Toronto to discuss a range of international issues in the run-up to the G7 meeting near Quebec City in June TORONTO: A van has struck several pedestrians in Canada"s largest city Toronto on Monday, killing at least nine people and injuring 16. The van apparently jumped a curb in a busy intersection, plowed into a sidewalk full of people, and fled the scene before it was found and the driver was taken into custody, Canadian police said. Pictures and television footage of the incident showed bodies wrapped in tarpaulin at the site of the incident. Several victims people were brought to nearby Sunnybrook Health Services Center’s trauma center, the hospital said on Twitter. The crash occurred at the corner of Yonge Street and Finch Avenue in the north end of the city, where a van drove onto the sidewalk and hit several people, said Toronto Police spokeswoman Meaghan Gray. A man who gave his name as Ali told CNN he saw the van and that the driver appeared to have been targeting people. “This person was intentionally doing this, he was killing everybody,” the man said. “He kept going, he kept going. People were getting hit, one after another.” He said a number of the victims were older people and at one point he saw a stroller fly into the air. "A witness," Phil Zullo, told Canadian Press that he saw police arresting a man who had been driving a Ryder rental truck and saw people "strewn all over the road" where the incident occurred. "It must have seen about five, six people being resuscitated by bystanders and by ambulance drivers," Zullo said. "It was awful. Brutal." It was not immediately clear if the incident was a deliberate act by the driver or a traffic mishap. It occurred at lunchtime on a sunny day and the sidewalks of the mixed commercial and residential area were full of pedestrians. Police were called just before 1:30 p.m. (1730 GMT) to the corner of Yonge Street and Finch Avenue in the north end of the city, where a van drove onto the sidewalk and hit multiple people, said Toronto Police spokeswoman Meaghan Gray. Buildings and workplaces in the area were locked down, and a nearby subway station was closed and service suspended. Bystander Essy Taeb told Toronto’s CP24 television the scene was chaotic. “Everyone was running all over the place,” Taeb said. The United States and Europe have seen a string of deadly attacks in which vehicles were used to mow down pedestrians, including an Oct. 31 attack in New York that killed eight. At least one person was struck outside on the sidewalk outside an Anglican church, about 1.5 kilometers (0.9 miles) north of where the van came to rest in front of a currency exchange in a condominium tower. Buildings and workplaces in the area where the van struck pedestrians in Toronto were locked down, and a nearby subway station was closed and service suspended. Yonge Street is large, divided boulevard at the point where the incident occurred, its center meridian dotted with planter boxes and sculptures. Some of the victims were struck in a public square popular with office workers on lunch breaks. Aerial photos of the scene posted on social media showed a food truck parked just a few feet away from where emergency workers busily transferred people onto stretchers. The incident happened about 30 km (18 miles) from downtown, where the Group of Seven foreign ministers of industrialized nations, including Canada, the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan were meeting on Monday. There was no noticeable change in security around the Intercontinental Hotel where the ministers gathered. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said officials were investigating. “We’re still gathering information and as soon as we can, we’ll share more information with Canadians,” Trudeau told reporters about an hour after news of the incident broke.