At least 33 people have died and 26 are being treated in hospital after the worst mass killing in US history after a lone gunman opened fire in a dormitory and a number of classrooms at a Virginia university.
The gunman was among the dead at Virginia Tech, a sprawling campus nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Police say he took his own life.
The shootings began shortly after 7am yesterday when the man walked into West Ambler Johnston, a co-education dormitory, and shot one person dead.
Just over two hours later, while police were investigating the shooting, the gunman entered Norris Hall, on the other side of the campus, and started shooting students as they sat in class.
Sophomore student Derek O'Dell was shot in the arm as he sat in a classroom on the second floor of the building. "He came inside the room and started shooting. He let off a full round in our room. I was one of probably 10 or 15 people who were shot just in our room . . . He was about in his 20s, I'd say. He was Asian. He had on a maroon hat and a black leather jacket," he said.
Mr O'Dell said the gunman did not speak when he entered the classroom and simply turned and left after he finished shooting. After the gunman left, a number of students barricaded the door and the attacker returned and started shooting through it.
Trey Perkins, another student in the engineering class, described an "unreal" scene with "blood pretty much everywhere".
"I'm not sure how long it lasted. It seemed like a really long time." Mr Perkins also said the gunman gave no warning as he entered the classroom. "He didn't say, 'Get down'. He didn't say anything." He just started shooting."
Amid scenes of panic, hundreds of students fled, some leaping from upstairs windows before police and Swat teams arrived and surrounded the building. As the dead and wounded were taken to nearby hospitals and morgues, investigators sought to establish a motive for the shootings and university authorities set up counselling centres for traumatised staff and students.
"Today the university was struck with a tragedy that we consider of monumental proportions. The university is shocked and indeed horrified," said Virginia Tech president Charles Steger.
With more than 25,000 full-time students, Virginia Tech is Virginia's largest university, with more than 100 buildings spread over 2,600 acres. Last August the opening day of classes was cancelled and the campus closed when an escaped jail inmate allegedly killed a hospital guard off campus and fled to the area near the university.
Until yesterday the deadliest campus shooting in US history was a rampage that took place in 1966 at the University of Texas at Austin, where Charles Whitman climbed the clock tower and opened fire with a rifle from the 28th-floor observation deck. He killed 16 people before police shot him dead.
In the Columbine High School massacre near Littleton, Colorado, in 1999, two teenagers killed 12 fellow students and a teacher before taking their own lives.
President George W Bush said the US was "shocked and saddened" by the killings. "Schools should be places of safety and sanctuary and learning. When that sanctuary is violated, the impact is felt in every American classroom and every American community," he said.
Three Irish engineering students who are on exchange in Virginia Tech university escaped injury.
The third-year UCD students, two males and a female, are on a year-long exchange programme, and were said to be safe and well.
One, Nicola, e-mailed the BBC website, describing the sense of shock that had taken over the campus. "A murderer on campus on our first day here is as bad as it could get, this is unbelievable," she wrote. "Find it hard to believe that 20 people can really be dead."
