At least seven people were killed Sunday after a gunman attacked a congregation at worship in a Sikh temple outside Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a police official said in broadcast remarks.
A special police team was working its way through the temple in Oak Creek to defuse a possible hostage situation that has also put at least three shooting victims in hospital, dpa reported.
A number of people, possibly up to 100, were still inside the gurudwara, but some had reportedly been brought out. Police were trying to determine if there was a second shooter inside the temple after one attacker had already been brought "down."
The dead appeared to include the "downed" shooter who fell in the parking lot following an exchange of gunfire with a veteran Oak Creek police officer.
The officer suffered multiple wounds and was undergoing surgery, said Brad Wentlandt, police chief of neighbouring Greenfield, Wisconsin, who stepped forward to handle press briefings while the Oak Creek police dealt with the crisis.
Wentlandt said that four of the dead were inside and three outside the temple.
Three shooting victims were in critical condition at Froedtert Hospital in Milwaukee, hospital spokesman Lee Biblo told CNN. He said trauma surgeons were on standby to take care of what he expected would be "many more victims."
Many of the wounds were in the victims' faces.
One of the three people being treated in hospital was the president of the temple. The president's son told CNN that he had been called by a priest inside the temple and told that his father had been injured. The president's wife was still inside the temple, hiding in a closet, he said.
The priest told him that there were "multiple shooters of Caucasian descent," the son told CNN. The son said that on a typical Sunday morning there could be between 90 to 100 people in the temple.
The attack was "very well coordinated ... it wasn't haphazard," the son said. The worried crowd outside the temple swelled as news of the shootings spread. Many had relatives and friends whose whereabouts were unknown.
Police officials warned that the situation was "very fluid" as the SWAT team went through the "methodical process" of identifying everyone inside and outside the temple.