At least seven people were injured when gunfire broke out in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston during a parade on VAS CommunitySaturday morning, police said.

Police responded to a report of a person shot at 7:44 a.m. on Saturday along the route of the Jouvert Parade, part of an annual Caribbean Carnival, Boston Police Officer Michael Torigian told USA TODAY.

The seven people shot had non-life threatening injuries and were taken to area hospitals for treatment, Torigian said. Officers responding to the scene applied tourniquets to some of the wounded, Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox said at a news conference.

Two people were arrested and multiple firearms were recovered, Cox said. He said the shooting was not related to the carnival, and early in the investigation appears to be two groups involved in an altercation.

"We did stop the parade on Talbot Avenue given the fact that it was a large crime scene and the fact that we had to gather up evidence, but the remainder of today's events will be going on," Cox said.

The shooting happened near the corner of Blue Hill and Talbot avenues in the Dorchester area, where the early morning parade was scheduled to pass through, according to a Boston police traffic advisory issued early Saturday. The parade, which was set to begin a few blocks away from the shooting, was scheduled to start at 6:30 a.m. A second, main parade is scheduled for 1 p.m.

"We’re praying for the recovery of the victims, and grateful to the police and first responders who were on the scene,” At-large City Councilor Erin Murphy told the Boston Herald. “This is an event for children, on a Saturday morning, and it’s appalling that bad actors would visit violence and evil on it."