A third officer was wounded. Local authorities urged residents to avoid the area, about 200 miles from Melbourne, as they searched for the gunman.
The police in the Australian state of Victoria launched a manhunt on Tuesday after a gunman killed two police officers in a rural town, a rare fatal shooting in a country with strict gun-control laws.
The shooting occurred on Tuesday morning as 10 police officers were executing a search warrant in the town of Porepunkah, Victoria Police Commissioner Mike Bush said during a news briefing. A heavily armed man fired on them, killing two officers and injuring another, he said.
Commissioner Bush declined to identify the two slain officers or the gunman, who he said was known to the police. The third officer’s injuries were not life-threatening, he said.
The commissioner asked residents to stay indoors while the police searched for the gunman, who he said was armed with several weapons and escaped the property alone after shooting the officers. The police were also looking for the gunman’s partner and his children.
Porepunkah, nearly 200 miles inland from Melbourne, has a population of about 1,000 people, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Footage on social media showed dozens of police officers in the area and a police helicopter flying above.
Local officials shut down public buildings, including schools. Porepunkah Primary School activated emergency measures as a precaution on Tuesday and all students and teachers were safe, Jill Gillies, the principal, said in a phone interview.
Gun violence is rare in Australia, where the government enforced mandatory gun buybacks after 35 people were killed in a mass shooting in Tasmania in 1996.
While mass shootings are rare, a police officer in Tasmania was shot dead in June while he and other officers were serving a warrant to repossess a house. Excluding the incident in June, 14 officers have been killed in the line of duty since 2020, according to the Australian National Police Memorial.