A gunman has opened fire at a cinema in the US state of Louisiana, killing two people and injuring several others before shooting himself, officials say.<\/p>\n
Police said the attacker was a 58-year-old white male armed with a handgun but did not release any further details.<\/p>\n
Witnesses said the man opened fire about 20 minutes into a screening of a film at the Grand Theatre in Lafayette.<\/p>\n
Hours earlier, US President Barack Obama told the BBC that gun law reform had been his “greatest frustration”.<\/p>\n
Police chief Jim Craft said officers responded to reports of a shooting at about 19:30 local time (01:30 GMT).<\/p>\n
Mr Craft said seven other people were taken to a local hospital with injuries ranging from critical to non-life threatening.<\/p>\n
The gunman’s identity is known to police, Mr Craft added, but is not being released at this time.<\/p>\n
The police chief said that the gunman did have a criminal history but that it was “pretty old”.<\/p>\n
Dozens of emergency vehicles were dispatched to the scene of the shooting in Lafayette, a city of about 120,000 people.<\/p>\n
One witness said she heard a loud bang like a firecracker and saw a man staring up and shooting during a screening of the film Trainwreck.<\/p>\n
“He wasn’t saying anything. I didn’t hear anybody screaming either,” Katie Domingue told local newspaper The Advertiser.<\/p>\n
About 100 people are thought to have been in the building at the time of the shooting.<\/p>\n
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, who arrived at the scene late on Thursday night, told reporters: “We will get through this. We are a resilient community.”<\/p>\n
“This is an awful night for Lafayette. This is an awful night for Louisiana. This is an awful night for the United States,” he added.<\/p>\n
US comedian and actress Amy Schumer, who stars in Trainwreck, tweeted: “My heart is broken and all my thoughts and prayers are with everyone in Louisiana.”<\/p>\n
The shooting comes as a jury deliberates the death penalty for a gunman who attacked a cinema in Colorado three years ago.<\/p>\n
James Holmes, 27, killed 12 people and wounding 70 others in July 2012 at a screening of a Batman film near Denver.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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