NEWTOWN, Connecticut: The residents of an idyllic Connecticut town were reeling in horror on Saturday from the massacre of 20 small children and six adults at a school, in one of the worst mass shootings in US history.

The heavily armed young gunman shot dead 18 children inside Sandy Hook Elementary School, said Connecticut State Police spokesman Lieutenant Paul Vance.

Vance said that two more died of their wounds in hospital. Six adults at the school were also killed before the gunman, clad in black body armor according to media reports, was shot either by his own hand or by police.

US media said that the school principal was among those killed.

Authorities offered little clue as to the motive for the shootings in New-town, a wooded and picturesque small town northeast of New York City.

Hours after the shooting, hundreds of people gathered for a vigil, the crowd filling the church to capacity and spilling outside its doors. Some lit candles while others joined hands to sing Christmas songs.

President Barack Obama, wiping away tears and struggling to maintain his composure, said he was aghast over the tragedy.

Vance said that just one person suffered an injury and survived, indicating that the gunman was unusually accurate or methodical in his fire.

The majority of killings, which began at about 9:30 a.m., “took place in one section of the school, in two rooms,” Vance added. The children were aged between five and ten, officials said.

US media reported that the killer was Adam Lanza, 20, and that police had earlier confused him with his brother, 24-year-old Ryan Lanza, whose identity card he had been carrying with him when he went into the school.

The surviving brother was in custody and being questioned, according to US television reports.

Many news outlets said the extra victim found in a home in New-town—the 28th body in the day’s bloodshed was the shooter’s mother, who was a teacher at Sandy Hook and whom he had killed before driving to the school.

Police said that they expected to be able to make public the identities of the victims later on Saturday.

Vance described a “massive investigation” and said that law enforcement agents working at the scene were having a hard time coping. “Between our personal experience, we’ve never seen anything like this. It’s heart wrenching for us,” he said.

Obama went on national television to express his “overwhelming grief.” He ordered flags to be lowered at half mast.

And there were similar statements of grief and shock around the world.

The head of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso spoke of his “deep shock and
horror,” Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II sent a message to Obama, in which she said that she was “deeply shocked and saddened.”

Of all US campus shootings, the toll was second only to the 32 murders in the 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech.

The latest number far exceeded the 15 killed in the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, which triggered a fierce but inconclusive debate about the United States’ relaxed gun control laws.

However, the White House scotched any suggestion that the politically explosive subject would be quickly reopened.

Witnesses described an intense fusillade fired at the elementary school, possibly numbering some 100 rounds and seeing a corridor splattered with blood.

Deadly shootings are frequent occurrences 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 until now, a 24-year-old, James Holmes, allegedly killed 12 people and wounded 58 others when he opened fire at a midnight screening of the latest Batman movie in Aurora, Colorado, in July.

However, despite the tragedies, support for tougher gun ownership laws is mixed, with many Americans opposing restrictions on what they consider to be a constitutional right to keep powerful firearms at home.

AFP