Ottawa police say they've uncovered some of the worst acts of child sexual abuse they've ever seen.

In the biggest child pornography bust in the history of the Ottawa police service, eight Ottawa men are facing charges of accessing and distributing images over the Internet of very young children engaged in sexual acts.

Sgt. Sandra McLaren said those acts include newborns to children only a few years old.

CTV's Ottawa affiliate, CJOH, reports that even seasoned officers were shaken by the images.

"It's one of shock, really. People think of pornography and nobody gets very excited about [it] anymore," Insp. Phil Lockett told CJOH.

"But this is more than pornography, this is child abuse. And to have young kids involved in some of these sexual acts on film is kind of hard to take."

The police service's high tech crimes unit began investigating the case after being tipped off by the RCMP National Child Exploitation Centre.

Search warrants netted computers, CDs and DVDs containing tens of thousands of child pornography images and movies from eight homes in Ottawa.

Police say this is a global problem, but the search is on to find whether any of the young victims are from Ottawa.

Sgt. McLaren told CJOH: "We've just started the forensic analysis on the media that we've seized, and certainly we will be looking at those images to try and determine if any of them have been created locally or involve children who are being abused are in our community here in Ottawa."

Authorities add that it was not a child pornography ring, noting there is no connection among those charged. But the investigation is ongoing and more charges may be on the way.

With files from CJOH and The Canadian Press