Seven killed as violence strikes two US universities

Seven university students were dead and at least one gunman was on the run following weekend violence that struck two US campuses in the states of Idaho and Virginia, authorities said.

Police were hunting for the student suspect in a shooting that left three people dead and two others wounded at the University of Virginia about 160 kilometers southwest of the nation's capital Washington.

The campus in Charlottesville, Virginia was locked down while helicopters and police searched for a man considered to be "armed and dangerous," the UVA Office of Emergency Management tweeted.

A student at the university identified as Christopher Darnell Jones Jr was suspected to have carried out the shooting on campus.

More than 2,000 miles to the west in the Rocky Mountain state of Idaho, police were investigating a separate incident in which four students were found dead in a home near the University of Idaho campus, believed to be the "victims of homicide."

"Upon arrival, officers discovered four individuals who were deceased," police said in a statement.

Also in May an 18-year-old gunman in Uvalde, Texas burst into Robb Elementary School and killed 19 students and two teachers, in an attack that shocked the nation and renewed calls for gun reform.

School shootings are alarmingly common as part of a broader wave of gun violence in the United States, where the proliferation of firearms has skyrocketed in recent years.