A suspect was shot by police during an attempted armed robbery at a bank in south Edmonton Tuesday afternoon.

Police were called around 2 p.m. to the Canadian Western Bank located at 21st Avenue and 99th Street where they found a man in his mid-twenties with a handgun.

"During the course of confronting the armed suspect, shots were fired," said Clif Purvis, executive director of the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team or ASIRT, the civilian agency which investigates all police-involved shootings in the province.

"The individual was struck numerous times. He is currently in surgery in hospital in Edmonton with life-threatening injuries."

Two uniformed Edmonton police officers fired their weapons. They are both speaking with ASIRT investigators, Purvis said.

'Holy Mackerel, what happened?'

Deirdre O'Riordan works at a nearby clinic and watched the scene unfold.

"There was a whole bunch of police cars pulling up and they were whipping out guns out of the trunk and we were like, Holy Mackerel, what happened?" she said.

"We just kind of freaked out. We were all watching from the window," her coworker Shantel Costin said.

Both O'Riordan and Costin saw paramedics take the injured person out of the bank.

Purvis said there will be two concurrent investigations into the incident. Edmonton Police will investigate the robbery, while his agency will probe the circumstance that led to the shooting.