A shooter opened fire on Wednesday on schoolchildren who frequent a religious service in Minneapolis, killing two students and injuring 17 children and adults, police said in the last violent tragedy to shake the United States.
City police chief Brian O’Hara told a press conference that the shooter had sprayed bullets in the Annunciation church while dozens of students marked their first week in school.
The church is located next to an affiliated Catholic school in the south of Minneapolis, the largest city in the Midwest of Minnesota.
“Two young children, aged eight and 10, were killed where they were sitting in the benches,” said O’Hara, adding that 17 people were injured, including 14 children. Two were in critical condition, he said.
The shooter pulled a rifle, a hunting rifle and a pistol before committing suicide in the parking lot, according to the police chief.
He said the shooter was at the start of the twenties, had no vast criminal history and acted alone. Investigators investigated “information left” to try to determine a possible reason, said O’Hara.
Two adults and nine children, aged six to 14, were neat at the Hennepin County Medical Center, doctors told journalists, with at least four people requiring immediate surgery.
“Minnesota has a broken heart,” wrote Governor Tim Walz on X. “Officers responding, to the clergy and teachers who offer comfort, to the staff of the saving hospital, we will spend together,” he said, adding: “Kiss your children nearby.”
Video sequences from the outside of a police cord has shown that panicked parents were rushing with their young children dressed in a school uniform from Green Polo.
Wednesday’s tragedy comes a little more than two months after a better democratic legislator and her husband was killed outside Minneapolis, which prompted a major man hunting through the state.
O’Hara described the attack on the Church an “act of deliberate violence against innocent children and other adores”. “Cruelty and cowardice to shoot in a church full of children are absolutely incomprehensible,” he said.
Mass shooting is the last of a long line of deadly school attacks in the United States, where weapons are more numerous than people and try to restrict access to firearms in the face of a lasting political dead end.
This year, there were at least 287 mass shots – defined as a shooting involving at least four victims, dead or injured – across the country, according to the archives of armed violence.
Last year, at least 16,700 people were killed in American firearms, not to mention suicides.
Among the numerous shocking school shots, there was a outburst in 2022 when an 18 -year -old shooter stormed a primary school Uvalde, Texas and opened fire, killing 19 students and two teachers.
“Do not say that it is a question of thoughts and prayers at the moment. These children were literally praying. It was the first week of school. They were in a church. They are children who should learn with their friends,” the mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, told journalists.
“They should play on the playing field. They should be able to go to school or church in peace without fear or risk of violence.”
US President Donald Trump said he was informed of the “tragic shooting” and that the FBI responded.
“The White House will continue to monitor this terrible situation. Please join me to pray for everyone involved!” He wrote on his social platform of truth.
A White House official later said that Trump quickly spoke with Walz, which he did not punctually after the assassination of a minnesota legislator in June. Walz was the Vice-Presidential Democratic candidate in last year’s elections.
Wednesday’s shooting also occurs in the middle of a wave of false active shooters who caused panic in several American university campuses while students return from the summer holidays.
