A Nigerian-born doctor on Friday opened fire with an assault rifle inside a hospital in the Bronx borough of New York, USA, killing one doctor and injuring six other people, five of them seriously.
The gunman, identified as Dr Henry Bello, was a former doctor at the hospital.
He killed himself in the attack.
The shooting began at about 14:55 local time (18:55 GMT) at the 1,000-bed Bronx-Lebanon Hospital.
Mayor Bill de Blasio said the shooting was not an act of terrorism, but rather workplace-related.
He said the attack had been a “horrific situation in the middle of a place that people associate with care and comfort”.
Several of the injured are “fighting for their lives,” he said, adding that the doctor killed in the attack was a woman.
Police said the suspect was wearing a white medical coat when found. An assault rifle was also discovered nearby, which a local politician separately said appeared to be a military-grade M16 rifle.
Police Commissioner James O’Neill said the attack began on the 16th floor and all the victims were shot on the 16th and 17th floors.
The gunman was not officially named but police sources told US media he was Henry Bello, 45, a former family-medicine doctor at the hospital. Sources quoted by NBC said he had resigned in 2015 in lieu of termination.
Mr O’Neill said the gunman had tried to set himself on fire and died of a self-inflicted wound.
Bello had received a limited permit to practice as an international medical graduate in order to gain experience so he could be fully licensed, but that permit expired a year ago, the Times reported. It said he also had a pharmacy technician license from California.
The Daily News said he had been a pharmacy tech at the hospital before he quit in 2015.
A native of Nigeria, Bello earned a medical degree from Ross University on the Caribbean Island nation of Dominica and later worked briefly as a pharmacy technician for Metropolitan Hospital Center in Manhattan in 2012, according to David Wims, a lawyer who represented Bello in an unemployment insurance claim against that hospital.
In a telephone interview, Wims told Reuters Bello was injured on the job at Metropolitan a few months after being hired, then went on leave and never returned. In a decision upheld by the state’s appellate court division, Bello ultimately was denied unemployment benefits on grounds he quit without good cause.
Wims said he remembered Bello as “an even-keeled, respectful, humble person” and knew nothing of his history at the Bronx hospital.
The New York Post, however, reported that he was arrested in in August 2014 in Manhattan following an incident in which a 23-year-old woman accused him of sexual assault.
