https:\/\/youtu.be\/mCVlEIENE2I<\/p>\n
Reuters) – A 64-year-old man armed with more than 10 rifles rained down gunfire on a Las Vegas country music festival on Sunday, slaughtering at least 58 people in the largest mass shooting in U.S. history before killing himself.<\/p>\n
The barrage from a 32nd-floor window in the Mandalay Bay hotel into a crowd of 22,000 people lasted several minutes, causing panic. Some fleeing fans trampled each other as police scrambled to find the gunman. More than 500 people were injured.<\/p>\n
Police identified the gunman as Stephen Paddock, who lived in a retirement community in Mesquite, Nevada, and said they had no sense of what prompted his attack. The Islamic State militant group claimed responsibility for the massacre, but U.S. officials expressed skepticism of that claim.<\/p>\n
The preliminary death toll, which officials warned could rise further, eclipsed last year\u2019s massacre of 49 people at an Orlando night club by a gunman who pledged allegiance to Islamic State militants.<\/p>\n
Shocked concert goers, some with blood on their clothing, wandered streets, where the flashing lights of the city\u2019s gaudy casinos blended with those of emergency vehicles.<\/p>\n
Police said they had no information about Paddock\u2019s motive, that he had no criminal record and was not believed to be connected to any militant group. Paddock killed himself before police entered the hotel room he was firing from, Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo told reporters.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have no idea what his belief system was,\u201d Lombardo said.<\/p>\n
Federal officials said there was no evidence to link Paddock to international militant groups.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs this event unfolds, we have determined to this point no connection with an international terrorist group,\u201d FBI special agent in charge Aaron Rouse told reporters.<\/p>\n
One U.S. official discounted a claim of responsibility that was made by Islamic State. There was reason to believe that Paddock had a history of psychological problems, the official said.<\/p>\n
In its claim, Islamic State said the gunman was a recent convert, according to the group\u2019s news agency Amaq. Its claim did not include the gunman\u2019s name and showed no proof. In the past, the group has also claimed responsibility for attacks without providing evidence.<\/p>\n
Lombardo said there were more than 10 rifles in the room where Paddock killed himself. He had checked into the hotel on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Police found several more weapons at Paddock\u2019s home in Mesquite, about 90 miles (145 km) northeast of Las Vegas, Mesquite police spokesman Quinn Averett told reporters.<\/p>\n
The dead included one off-duty police officer, Lombardo said. Two on-duty officers were injured, including one who was in stable condition after surgery and one who sustained minor injuries, Lombardo said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe brutally murdered more than 50 people and wounded hundreds more. It was an act of pure evil,\u201d U.S. President Donald Trump said in a White House address. He ordered flags lowered to half-staff in a national gesture of mourning and said he would visit Las Vegas on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Leaders from around the world expressed shock and sadness at the news.People wait in a medical staging area on October 2, 2017, after a mass shooting during a music festival in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S. REUTERS\/Las Vegas Sun\/Steve Marcus<\/span><\/p>\n \u2018JUST KEPT GOING ON\u2019<\/p>\n Video of the attack showed panicked crowds fleeing as sustained rapid gunfire ripped through the area.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople were just dropping to the ground. It just kept going on,\u201d said Steve Smith, a 45-year-old visitor from Phoenix, Arizona. He said the gunfire went on for an extended period of time.<\/p>\n \u201cProbably 100 shots at a time,\u201d Smith said. \u201cIt would sound like it was reloading and then it would go again.\u201d<\/p>\n Las Vegas\u2019s casinos, nightclubs and shopping draw some 3.5 million visitors from around the world each year and the area was packed with visitors when the shooting broke out shortly after 10 p.m. local time (0400 GMT).<\/p>\n Shares of U.S. casino operators fell in morning trading on Wall Street, with MGM Resorts International, which owns the Mandalay Bay, down 3.5 percent. Melco Resorts & Entertainment Ltd, Wynn Resorts Ltd and Las Vegas Sands Corp were little changed. [L4N1MD3CA]\n Mike McGarry, a financial adviser from Philadelphia, was at the concert when he heard hundreds of shots ring out.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was crazy – I laid on top of the kids. They\u2019re 20. I\u2018m 53. I lived a good life,\u201d McGarry said. The back of his shirt bore footmarks, after people ran over him in the panicked crowd.<\/p>\n The shooting broke out on the final night of the three-day Route 91 Harvest festival, a sold-out event featuring top acts such as Eric Church, Sam Hunt and Jason Aldean.<\/p>\n \u2018WE\u2018RE HORRIFIED\u2019<\/p>\n The suspected shooter\u2019s brother, Eric Paddock, said the family was stunned.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have no idea. We\u2019re horrified. We\u2019re bewildered and our condolences go out to the victims,\u201d Eric Paddock said in a phone interview, his voice trembling. \u201cWe have no idea in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n As with previous U.S. mass shootings, the incident sparked anger among advocates for gun control. The Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects the right to bear arms, and gun-rights advocates staunchly defend that provision.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s time for Congress to get off its ass and do something,\u201d said U.S. Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, where 26 young children and educators were killed in an attack on a school in 2012.<\/p>\n \u201cThis must stop. It is positively infuriating that my colleagues in Congress are so afraid of the gun industry that they pretend there aren\u2019t public policy responses to this epidemic.\u201d<\/p>\n The rampage was reminiscent of a mass shooting at a Paris rock concert in November 2015 that killed 89 people, part of a wave of coordinated attacks by Islamist militants in which 130 people were killed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" https:\/\/youtu.be\/mCVlEIENE2I Reuters) – A 64-year-old man armed with more than 10 rifles rained down gunfire on a Las Vegas country music festival on Sunday, slaughtering at least 58 people in the largest mass shooting in U.S. history before killing himself. The barrage from a 32nd-floor window in the Mandalay Bay hotel into a crowd of …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9438,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[388],"tags":[4264,2762,1810,4267,4263,4265,1532,4266],"class_list":["post-9436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-slide","tag-58-people","tag-at-least","tag-attack","tag-concert","tag-gunman","tag-in-las","tag-kills","tag-vegas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aldiplomasy.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aldiplomasy.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aldiplomasy.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aldiplomasy.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aldiplomasy.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9436"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.aldiplomasy.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9440,"href":"https:\/\/www.aldiplomasy.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9436\/revisions\/9440"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aldiplomasy.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aldiplomasy.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aldiplomasy.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aldiplomasy.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}