Fort Hood, Texas: Investigators yesterday searched for the motive behind a mass shooting at a sprawling US army base in Texas, in which an army psychiatrist trained to treat war wounded is suspected of killing 13 people.
A spokesman at the base said the suspected gunman, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, a lifelong Muslim born in the US of immigrant parents, had been shot four times by security police and was unconscious but in stable condition.
A woman died overnight from her wounds, raising the toll from Thursday’s incident to 13 dead and 30 wounded, said Col John Rossi, a spokesman at Fort Hood, the biggest military facility in the world.
The army refused to discuss possible motives for the shooting while the investigation is under way. “We’re not going to speculate on motives,” Rossi told reporters at the base, from where thousands of troops are deployed to combat zones.
The gunman, with two guns including a semi-automatic weapon, opened fire apparently without warning at the crowded Soldiers Readiness Processing Centre, where troops were getting medical check-ups before leaving for foreign deployments.
Hasan, 39, had spent years counselling severely wounded and traumatised soldiers at the Walter Reed Army Medical Centre in Washington, DC, many of whom had lost limbs during combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He had been transferred to Fort Hood in April and was to have been deployed to Afghanistan, where the US military is engaged in an increasingly bloody war against Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters.
Hasan’s cousin, Nader Hasan, has said in media interviews that he was very reluctant to be deployed overseas and had agitated not to be sent. “We’ve known over the last five years that was probably his worst nightmare,” he said.
Nader Hasan said his cousin had complained of harassment by fellow soldiers.
American Muslim groups issued statements expressing regret over the incident and stressing that it appeared to have been carried out by a single disturbed individual.
“Thousands of Arab Americans and American Muslims serve honourably everyday in all four branches of the US military and in the National Guard,” the Arab American Institute said.
The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee deplored the shooting by what it called a “rogue” gunman, but suggested Muslim American communities take special precautions “due to the potential of a backlash against these communities.” - Reuters |
