Panic paralysed Montreal when a gunman in a black trench coat went on the rampage at a college in the heart of the Canadian city.

Thirteen people were wounded when the young man stormed Dawson College, sending hundreds of students fleeing into the surrounding streets.

Police said the gunman later shot himself, leaving six victims in critical condition, and two others "serious."

The shooting revived memories of the infamous "Montreal Massacre" of December 6, 1989, when Marc Lepine shot 27 female engineering students at the city's Ecóle Polytechnique, killing 14 of them, before killing himself.

The outcry over that mass murder led to tighter gun laws in Canada, including a controversial national firearms register.

But today's attack shook Canada's image as a haven from the gun violence so prevalent south of the border in the United States.

Canada's reputation is such that the American director Michael Moore to hold the country up in his film "Bowling for Columbine", about the 1999 Columbine school massacre in Colorado, as an paragon of a peaceful society.

Initial reports said that as many as three gunmen could have been involved, prompting a frantic police search.

But Ean Lafreniere, a police spokesman, said there was just one suspect and the search of the campus for other assailants was complete.

Witnesses at Dawson College said one gunman opened fire on a group of smokers congregating outside the school's main entrance.

"I was in my calculus class. It was coming to the end of class and we were getting ready to leave. We heard four bangs. We didn't know they were gunshots, because there has been construction. But someone looked out of the window and said, 'Oh my God, someone's been shot'," Joseph Estevez, a student, said on TV.

"When we looked outside the window, there was somebody on the ground. He was convulsing. There was blood coming out of his head. There was also the main and he was sweeping it around and then he went running into the school main entrance. And the other two people were shot. They were down."

"We saw him run into the school. We barricaded the door. We turned off the lights. We made everyone get under the desks," he said.

A white man in a black trench coat with knee-high black boots opened fire in the third-floor cafeteria at lunchtime, witnesses said.

Devansh Smri Vastava, a student, said he saw a man in military fatigues in the cafeteria and heard about 20 shots fired.

"We all ran upstairs. There were cops firing. It was so crazy," Mr Vastava said. "I was terrified. The guy was shooting at people randomly. He didn't care he was just shooting at everybody. I just got out."

Derick Osei, 19, said he walking down the stairs when he saw a man with a gun.

"He ... just started shooting up the place. I ran up to the third floor and I looked down and he was still shooting," Osei said. "He was hiding behind the vending machines and he came out with a gun and started pointing and pointed at me. So I ran up the stairs. I saw a girl get shot in the leg."

"I saw the gunman who was dressed in black and at that time he was shooting at people," Michel Boyer, another student, told CTV. I immediately hit the floor. It was probably one of the most frightening moments of my life.;

"He was shooting randomly, I didn't know what he was shooting at, but everyone was screaming get out of the building," Mr Boyer said. "Everybody was in tears. Everybody was so worried for their own safety for their own lives."

A police SWAT team cleared classrooms at the English-language college, which offers pre-university courses for some 10,000 students.

"It was the most scary thing that has ever happened to me," student Michael Boyer told CBC Television. "We ran out of the building as a SWAT team was coming in. They were screaming 'Where is he? Where is he?' And when you have 20 police running at you with guns you really know that your life is in danger."

A shopping centre across the street from the campus was also evacuated, after people also reported shots there. Police closed an underground station that has directly access to the college.

"Behind the barricades, there were people crying, people vomiting, people fainting," Arielle Reid, a faculty member, told CBC television. "There is blood. there is broken glass. There are cops. People are yelling."

Montreal police said one suspect had been "neutralised." Television images showed police officers dragging a bloody body out of the main doors of the building.

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