At least 10 people were killed and 20 more injured in a campus shooting at a community college in the U.S. state of Oregon Thursday, according to state police.
The gunman was said to be a 20-year-old male who started the carnage at the community college campus in rural Oregon before having an exchange of fire with police.
Sheriff John Hanlin of Douglas County told a news briefing about three hours later that the lone shooter was dead on the scene at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, southern Oregon.
However, despite other officials in the northwestern state providing various media outlets with casualties as high as 13 dead and more than 20 injured, Hanlin said he did not have numbers of the kind.
In Portland, about 290 kilometer north of Roseburg, State Police Superintendent Richard Evans said law enforcement received an alert at 10:38 a.m., local time.
According to local news reports, four guns were recovered at the scene.
The White House responded with a call for "common sense gun control" measures.
Ray Shoufler, a fire marshal of Douglas County, was quoted as saying by reports reaching here that the shooting, as well as casualties, took place within classrooms at the two-year school with some 3,300 full-time students.
Other witness accounts indicated that the gunman started shooting at the science building and moved into at least another building.
He was confronted with police officers and exchanged gunfire.
Sheriff Hanlin did not specify whether the shooter, whose identity was withheld for now, was killed by police officers or took his own life.
Agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosive (ATF) were sent to the scene.
Telephone call to the school was answered with a recorded message.
