Montreal – The two men accused of carrying out separate deadly attacks in Canada this week had recently converted to Islam and wanted to join the extremist fight, officials and local media said Thursday.

Both men were killed during the violence, which officials called “terrorist attacks,” the first such incidents tied to Islamic extremism ever to take place in Canada.

On Monday, 25-year-old Martin Couture-Rouleau, from Quebec, used his car as a weapon when he mowed down two soldiers near Montreal, killing one of them, before being shot dead by police as he emerged from his wrecked vehicle holding a knife.

Then on Wednesday, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, 32, shot and killed a soldier who was on ceremonial guard at a war memorial in downtown Ottawa before storming into the nearby parliament building, where he was shot dead.

Though Canada had never been hit by such an attack, authorities knew the country was at risk, and militants have recently made new threats of violence in retaliation for its role in the Middle East.

Canada participated in the war in Afghanistan, where 158 Canadian troops were killed between 2003 and 2011, and has recently joined the US-led military coalition against the Islamic State group in Iraq.

Canadian authorities have thwarted several attempted bomb plots since the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, as well as disrupted terror networks that had targeted sites including the Toronto Stock Exchange, Parliament, and even a passenger train.

The crude methods deployed in this week’s attacks raise questions on law enforcement’s ability to act against “lone wolf” attackers, who operate outside known militant hierarchies and seem to respond to more general calls for violence from radical preachers online.
– Passports confiscated –

According to initial investigations, Couture-Rouleau and Zehaf-Bibeau acted alone, and it’s not yet clear to what extent their acts were premeditated.

The two men had recently converted to radical Islam, and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Couture-Rouleau was “a terrorist” inspired by Islamic State jihadists.

He converted to Islam a year ago and now preferred to be called “Ahmad”. In recent months, he increasingly had espoused extremist views to friends and online.

Zehaf-Bibeau had started using the name “Abdul” and had been banned from a Vancouver suburb mosque.

According to the Globe and Mail newspaper, he had links to Hasibullah Yusufzai, a Canadian accused of having joined the Islamic State group in Syria.

Canadian authorities had confiscated both mens’ passports, fearing they would go off to join IS, as have another 130 Canadians, according to intelligence services here.

In July, Couture-Rouleau was barred at the last minute from leaving for Turkey, a popular entry point for would-be jihadists looking to fight in Iraq and Syria.

Zehaf-Bibeau wanted to go back to Libya, a country he’d already visited and where his father had fought the Moamer Khadafi regime during the 2011 revolution.

Local press have reported that both men were isolated from their families.

According to Le Journal de Montreal, Couture-Rouleau’s ex-wife was fighting to keep custody of his three-year-old and he had not seen the child for five months because of his conversion to Islam.

The mother of the Ottawa killer said her son had been alienated from the family for five years.