MONTREAL - Montreal police have shot and killed a man who had apparently cut one of them with a blade in the Bonaventure metro station Friday afternoon.

The officer suffered injuries after being slashed in the head and upper body with a sharp object. The injuries are not life-threatening. The second officer was treated for shock.

Shots were fired inside the metro just before 2:00 p.m. and more than a dozen police cars and several ambulances rushed to the station.

One witness provided this account.

"There was a guy walking around with two police officers. They kept asking him to get down and stop walking," said witness Carl Nantel.

"They went out with a gun and the guy ran away. I was between the guy and the cops and they told me to get out of the way. The guy ran away. He turned around the corner and I heard three loud shots and when I went to see, a policeman stopped us and we saw a policeman down," Nantel told CTV Montreal.

A woman who did not want to be identified said that she saw a police officer running through the busy station carrying a gun and telling commuters to clear out of the way.

"Then you heard bang-bang-bang," she said. "That was pretty much it but I found it disturbing because there were so many people around and the cops didn't stop to think what is going on it was just with the gun, 'tassez-vous!' and they just proceeded," she said.

The man killed appeared to be a vagrant. His identity has not been released.

Nantel described him as a man in his fifties, wearing a leather jacket with slicked back hair.

He was brought to hospital but was pronounced dead just after 3:00 p.m.

De la Cathedrale Street was closed between St. Antoine and de la Gauchetière Street and the metro service at that station was suspended.

The metro line was originally shut down between Berri-UQAM and Lionel-Groulx. The Bonaventure metro remained closed for some time after the rest of the line was reopened.

Montreal police representative Ian Lafreniere said that the exact details of the event remain unclear. The SQ provincial police will investigate the shooting. 

A provincial police representative described the situation to CTV Montreal.

"During this altercation it would appear that this individual attacked one of the officers with an edged weapon, injuring the officer, following which one of the officers apparently opened fire on the individual hitting him as well," said Daniel Thibaudeau of the Surete.

Montreal police have been patrolling the city's 68 metro stations since the summer of 2007. The unit includes 133 officers.

They have come under scrutiny since a shooting last June when a homeless man was killed during a police operation.

During the same incident an innocent bystander was also struck and killed.

That shooting prompted questions about whether police are too quick to use their weapons and about the transparency of another police force investigating the incident.

In Quebec, it is customary for a separate police force to investigate when another has been involved in an incident where there have been injuries or death.

With a file from The Canadian Press