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United States of Murder and Massacre:13 killed, 20 injured in US college shooting

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At least 13 people have been killed and 20 more injured following a shooting at a college campus in the US state of Oregon.

Police received a call of an active shooter in a classroom at the Umpqua Community College on Thursday at 10:30 am, local time, according to the Douglass County Sheriff’s Office.

Initial reports showed that at least 15 people died in the deadly incident.

But Oregon State Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum told NBC News that 13 people died and about 20 others were wounded.

According to CNN, at least 20 people were critically injured, including one woman who was shot in the chest.

Police have taken the gunman, believed to be in his early 20s, into custody but the motives behind the shooting remain unclear, Oregon State Police spokesman Bill Fugate said.

But later reports said that the suspect is dead.

Residents and students were warned by authorities not to go to the campus. The college website has been down since the shooting.

A patient is wheeled into the emergency room at Mercy Medical Center in Roseburg, Oregon. (AP photo)

The college, located in Roseburg, Oregon, has about 3,000 full time students and 16,000 part-time students.

Authorities said the shooting took place in one of the classrooms in the science building at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg and that a suspect was in custody.

Every year, more than 30,000 people are shot and killed in the United States.

The US averages 87 gun deaths each day as a function of gun violence, with an average of 183 injured, according to the University of Chicago Crime Lab and the Centers for Disease Control.

About 4.5 million firearms are sold annually in the United States at a cost of 2 to 3 billion dollars.

On December 14, 2012, twenty children and six adults were fatally shot by a gunman — who later killed himself — at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in the town of Newtown in the US state of Connecticut.

Following the Sandy Hook shooting, President Barack Obama pushed for gun reform, including expanded background checks and a ban on high-capacity magazines, but the powerful gun rights lobby and its people in Congress fiercely opposed the measure.

Obama has said the “biggest frustration” of his time in the office has been the inability to reduce unparalleled levels of gun violence in the country.

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