2 children killed, 17 people injured in US School shooting

Two children aged eight and 10 have been killed and 17 people injured when a gunman opened fire on schoolchildren attending Mass at a Catholic school in Minneapolis, United States.

The police chief of Minneapolis, Minnesota, said that of the people injured in the Wednesday morning attack, 14 are children and two were in critical condition. All the children being treated are expected to survive their injuries.

Local authorities have not yet discerned a motive for the attack and said the shooter – armed with a rifle, a shotgun and a pistol – took his own life and appears to have acted alone. The FBI said that it is probing the attack as a potential act of terrorism.

“This was a deliberate act of violence against innocent children and other people worshipping,” Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said during a news conference. “The sheer cruelty and cowardice of firing into a church full of children is absolutely incomprehensible.”

Police said the assailant, identified as Robin Westman, was in his 20s and did not appear to have had an extensive criminal history. Dozens of rounds were fired during the attack, during which the gunman, dressed in black clothing, stood outside the church and fired in through the windows as schoolchildren were seated in the pews. Additional firearms were recovered at residences with connections to Westman.
The attack is the 146th such attack of its type since January, according to the K-12 School Shooting Database. While school shootings have become a grim fact of life in the US, efforts to place additional restrictions on gun ownership have run into opposition from conservative groups and politicians.

Al-Jazeera