The police said Friday that they had disrupted a plot by four people to kill a “large number of individual citizens” in the Halifax area of Nova Scotia. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Halifax police offered few specifics about the planned attack except to say that its two leaders also planned to commit suicide at the conclusion of their armed assault, which was scheduled for Saturday. “There’s nothing in the investigation to classify it as a terrorist attack or terrorist incident,” said Assistant Commissioner Brian F. Brennan, the commanding officer for the mounted police in Nova Scotia. He said the plotters were motivated by “some beliefs,” which he declined to identify. A 23-year-old woman from Geneva, Ill., was arrested at the Halifax airport along with a 20-year-old man from Nova Scotia. A 17-year-old man was arrested separately, and a fourth man, 19, was found dead in a house.
A version of this brief appears in print on February 14, 2015, on page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: Canada: Attack Plot Is Foiled, Police Say. Order Reprints| Today’s Paper|Subscribe
