3 killed, 11 wounded in Philadelphia in latest US mass shooting
Three people were killed and 11 others wounded late Saturday in the US city of Philadelphia after multiple shooters opened fire into a crowd on a busy street, police said.
The nighttime barrage marked the latest mass shooting to jolt the United States, a country in the grips of a gun violence epidemic that shows no signs of abating even as lawmakers scramble for ways to reduce the carnage that has already claimed several thousand American lives this year.
Philadelphia Police Inspector D.F. Pace told reporters that two men and a woman were killed, adding that officers responding to the incident "observed several active shooters shooting into the crowd."
"You can imagine there were hundreds of individuals enjoying South Street, as they do every single weekend, when this shooting broke out," Pace said.
Numerous officers patrolling the popular nightlife area were already on the scene when the first shots were heard, a police deployment that Pace described as "standard" for the area on summer weekend nights.
A responding officer fired at one of the shooters, who dropped his gun and fled, though it was unclear whether the man was hit, Pace said.
Local media reported that no arrests had been made, and that as of Sunday morning the streets where the chaos erupted remained closed.
Pace said two semi-automatic handguns, one with an extended magazine, were recovered at the scene.
