A Canadian terror suspect killed in Strathroy, Ontario on Wednesday, had made a "martyrdom video" and was planning an attack within 72 hours, police said Thursday, according to the CBC.
The suspect, 24-year-old Aaron Driver, had reportedly planned to attack an urban center during morning or afternoon rush hour, police say.
Driver was under a peace bond for communicating with what the Royal Canadian Mountain Police (RCMP) called well-known ISIS supporters in the UK and the U.S.
Speaking at a news conference in Ottawa Thursday afternoon, Mike Cabana, the RCMP's deputy commissioner for federal policing, said the FBI came into possession of the video and tipped off the Mounties about 8:30 a.m. Wednesday.
The video, which the RCMP aired at the news conference, shows a man wearing a balaclava speaking directly to the camera pledging allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and railing against Western "enemies of Islam."
“We are thirsty for your blood,” he said, according to the CBC, and praised recent attacks in France and Brussels while promising to act in Canada.
The RCMP said they were able to identify the person in the video as Driver by about 11:00 a.m.
Driver reportedly left a residence in Strathroy around 4:30 p.m. and got into a cab that he had called. The RCMP's emergency response team surrounded the cab and "engaged with a suspect who detonated a device in the back of a cab," said Cabana.
The cab driver was reportedly injured but the cab company would not give CBC News details on the extent of the driver's injuries, only saying he is at home and not in hospital.
The RCMP's Jennifer Strachan, assistant commissioner and commanding officer for Ontario, said there will be an autopsy to determine how Driver died — it's unclear whether it was from the explosive or from police fire, adding that a police firearm was deployed after the explosion.
Police said they did not know of any specific location that Driver was planning to attack. They added that there is no information suggesting that Driver had any accomplices.
Driver converted to Islam as a teen and underwent a radicalization process, his father has said.
He used the alias Harun Abdurahman for online and social media communications, and according to officials, communicated with liked-minded officials such as a British teen later arrested for plotting an attack in Australia, an American who wounded a security guard in Texas in 2015, and Reyaad Khan and Junaid Hussein, two Britons who travelled to Syria to fight were ISIS and were subsequently killed.
Driver attracted the attention of intelligence officials in late 2014, and was arrested on a peace bond in June 2015. He agreed to the terms of a peace bond earlier this year and a number of attendant requirements, noted the CBC.
But the peace bond did not require Driver to wear a GPS monitoring bracelet or undergo religious counselling — two conditions that Driver faced when he was released on bail in 2015.
Canada has been targeted by terrorism before. In March, a Muslim man stabbed soldiers at a Toronto military recruitment center in March, and later claimed under interrogation that “Allah” told him to carry out the attack.
In October of 2014, a terrorist shot and killed a soldier near the Canadian parliament in Ottawa.
That attack came a week after a 25-year-old who converted to Islam rammed his car into two soldiers in the Quebec town of Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu and was shot dead by police. One of the soldiers later died.