Students Shot Dead at Amish School

A lone gunman killed at least three young girls and critically wounded several others at an Amish school in Pennsylvania today, in the latest in a spate of school shootings.

The gunman, a truck driver who lived locally, took the schoolgirls hostage and tied them up before opening fire as negotiators surrounded the school. Troopers quickly stormed the small rural school and found the man dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Three girls, including one aged 11, are in a critical condition in hospital after suffering gunshot wounds. According to a statement from police, only three deaths were confirmed, but earlier the county coroner said six people were dead.

State police said the man, carrying a semi-automatic handgun and a shotgun, had sent all the boys out from the one-room school, along with the teacher and her assistants. Between 10 and 12 remaining girls, aged between six and 13 years old, were bound with wire.

Dozens of state troopers were dispatched to the school in Lancaster County, in south-east Pennsylvania, at 10.45 am local time (1445 GMT), nine minutes after an emergency call was received. The gunman threatened to open fire if the troopers did not leave the area. But before they could respond, police said, they heard shots being fired.

Police identified the gunman as Charles Carl Roberts IV, 32, of Bart, Pennsylvania. The man had left suicide notes for his family. While no exact motive has been established, police said he had spoken of getting "revenge" for an incident that occurred 20 years ago.

The incident is the third fatal shooting at a US school in a week, but the first to hit the pacifist, isolated Amish community.

On Friday, a 15-year-old student fatally wounded his school headteacher in western Wisconsin. And a drifter in Colorado on Wednesday took six female high school students hostage, molesting them and shooting one, and himself, dead as police closed in.