A gunman killed 50 people at a packed gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida on Sunday in the worst mass shooting in US history which authorities described as a possible act of terrorism.
Police killed the shooter, who was identified as Omar Mateen, a Florida resident. A top US congressman said the suspect may have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State militant group.
US officials cautioned, however, that they had no immediate evidence of any direct connection with Islamic State or any other foreign extremist group.
Mateen, a Muslim and father to a three-year-old son, was born in 1986 in New York and married Sitora Alisherzoda Yusufiy, who was born in Uzbekistan, in 2009.
His father told NBC News: “We were in Downtown Miami, Bayside, people were playing music. And he saw two men kissing each other in front of his wife and kid and he got very angry.”
That happened months before he went on rampage.
“They were kissing each other and touching each other and he said, ‘Look at that. In front of my son they are doing that’. And then we were in the men’s bathroom and men were kissing each other.”
Fifty-three people were wounded in the rampage, which Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer said was the deadliest single US shooting incident, eclipsing the 32 people killed in the 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech university.
“Today we’re dealing with something that we never imagined and is unimaginable,” Dyer said, more than doubling an earlier estimate that about 20 bodies had been found.
A police officer working as a security guard inside the Pulse nightclub, which has operated in downtown Orlando since 2004 and was hosting some 350 revellers, exchanged fire with the suspect at about 2 a.m. ET, police officials said.
“Everyone get out of pulse and keep running,” the club’s management wrote on Facebook as the incident unfolded.
A hostage situation developed, and three hours later SWAT team officers used armoured cars to storm the club before shooting dead the gunman. It was unclear when the victims were killed.
Dozens of terrified patrons, some of whom had been hiding in restrooms, were rescued. One officer was injured when he was hit in his helmet while exchanging fire with the gunman, police said.
Representative Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on a congressional intelligence committee, noted that the shooting took place during Ramadan, and that ISIS leaders in Syria have urged attacks during this time.
“The target was an LGBT nightclub during Pride, and – if accurate – that according to local law enforcement the shooter declared his allegiance to ISIS, (that) indicates an ISIS-inspired act of terrorism,” Schiff said in a statement.
Asked if the FBI suspected the gunman might have had inclinations toward militant Islam, including a possible sympathy for Islamic State, Ronald Hopper, an assistant FBI agent in charge, told reporters: “We do have suggestions that the individual may have leanings toward that particular ideology. But right now we can’t say definitively.”
President Barack Obama ordered the federal government to provide any assistance needed to Florida police investigating the shooting, the White House said. He was due to speak later Sunday.
The attacker was carrying an assault rifle and a handgun, Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings said. He was also carrying an unidentified “device”, Orlando Police Chief John Mina said earlier.
Video footage showed police officers and civilians carrying some people away from the club and bending over others on the ground. Dozens of police cruisers, ambulances and other emergency vehicles could be seen in the area.
Orlando has a population of 270,930 and is the home of the famed Disney World amusement park and many other tourist attractions that attracted 62 million visitors in 2014.
It was the second deadly shooting at an Orlando night spot in as many nights. Late Friday, a man thought to be a deranged fan fatally shot singer Christina Grimmie, a 22-year-old former contestant on The Voice, as she was signing autographs after a concert.
