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NEW YORK- Dec 14, 2012 (AFP)
At least 27 people were killed, including 18 children, in a shooting Friday at a Connecticut elementary school, US media reported.
Connecticut State Police spokesman Paul Vance would not give details, but confirmed “there was a shooting.”
CBS News cited law enforcement sources as saying that 27 people were killed, including 18 children. A White House spokesman said that President Barack Obama had been informed of the shooting and was following events.
Local media quoted unconfirmed reports that a gunman had died at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, northeast of New York City.
Police swarmed into the leafy neighborhood after the shooting, while other area schools were put under lock-down, police and local media said.
Reports also said that at least one teacher was wounded, while The Newtown Bee newspaper said that a child was carried out of the school with apparently serious injuries.
A photo on the Bee’s website showed officers leading more than a dozen clearly frightened small children across a parking lot. Another image showed officers gathering in the quiet street nearby.
On the Newtown Public School District website, an alert was posted warning that “afternoon kindergarten is cancelled today” and that there would be no lunch-hour bus runs.
Authorities were to give a press conference on the emergency at 1:00 pm (1800 GMT).
Deadly shootings are a regular occurrence in US public places, often ending only when the gunman is shot or kills himself.
On Tuesday, a man with a semi-automatic rifle raked an Oregon shopping mall, killing two people, then taking his own life.
In the most notorious recent incident, in July this year, a 24-year-old, James Holmes, allegedly killed 12 people and wounded 58 others when he opened fire in a midnight screening of the latest Batman movie in Aurora, Colorado.
Last month, gunman Jared Loughner was jailed for life for killing six people in Tucson, Arizona, in January 2011 in an attack targeting congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in the head at point-blank range but survived.
However, despite the tragedies support for tougher gun ownership laws is mixed, with many Americans opposing restrictions of what they consider to be a constitutional right to keep powerful firearms at home.
