17-year-old charged with Canada mass shooting after four killed in Saskatchewan school

Four people were killed, including two school teachers, in the attack on Friday which left seven others injured

The outside of La Loche Community School is shown on Friday Jan. 22, 2016. (The Canadian Press/AP)

A 17-year-old boy has been charged after a mass shooting which left four people dead and seven injured in Saskatchewan, Canada.

Canadian police confirmed the teenager faces four first-degree murder charges and seven charges of attempted murder after the shooting at a house and school in La Loche.

La Loche Community School teachers Marie Janvier, 21 and Adam Wood, 35, and brothers Dayne and Drayden Fontaine, aged 17 and 13 respectively, were killed in the shooting on Friday.

The gunman cannot be named because of his age.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) said the teen shot nine people in the school in around nine minutes before he was arrested at gunpoint by officers who gave chase.

The town’s acting mayor, Kevin Janvier, lost his daughter Marie in the shooting.

According to local media, 150 students were in the school at the time of the attack.

Saskatchewan's StarPhoenix newspaper quoted student Noel Desjarlais-Thomas, 16, saying his friends had run past him urging him to flee.

"’There's a shotgun! There's a shotgun!’ They were just yelling to me. And then I was hearing those shots, too, so of course I started running," he said.

Mass shootings are relatively rare in Canada, which has stricter gun laws than the US. A candlelit vigil was held in the wake of the tragedy.