Oregon - A gunman opened fire on Thursday at a community college in Oregon, killing several people and wounding others, county officials and local media reported, in the latest mass killing to rock a US school.
There were conflicting reports on the number of casualties and wounded. An official with the Douglas County local government told Reuters that 15 people had been killed in the rampage at Umpqua Community College.
CNN reported at least 10 people had died.
The Portland Oregonian newspaper and CNN reported that a suspect had been taken into custody following the shooting, citing Douglas County officials. That suspect was not identified but CNN reported he was in his late 20s.
The shooting is the latest incident of gun violence in the United States, raising demands for more gun control and more effective treatment of the mentally ill. Recent episodes of gun violence include the massacre of nine people at a South Carolina church last spring and the killing of five US servicemen in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
CNN reported that one of the wounded was a female who had been shot in the chest. The Oregonian said that at least six patients were critically injured in the shooting, citing an official with Life Flight.
The Douglas County Sheriff's office said on Facebook that officers had responded to a shooting at the college following 911 calls at 10:38am local time.
Mercy Medical Center in Roseburg said on Facebook that the hospital had received nine patients from the shooting and had been advised that three more were en route.
"Please continue to pray," the hospital said.
Local media reported that authorities were combing through the campus, which serves more than 13 000 students, 3 000 of them full-time. Fall term began at the college on Monday.
The Douglas County Sheriff's Office said students and faculty members were being bused to the nearby fairgrounds where they could be picked up.
The paper said agents from the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were en route to Roseburg, a city of about 20 000 people some 418 km south of Portland.
In 2012, seven students at the small Christian college Oikos University in Oakland, California, were shot dead by a former student, marking the deadliest outburst of violence at US college since April 2007, when a student at Virginia Tech University killed 32 people and wounded 25 others before taking his own life.
Reuters