Alabama mass shooting claims four lives, injures 18

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Representational image of a police tape at an incident site. — AFP File

At least four people were shot dead and 18 wounded in a mass shooting incident in Birmingham, Alabama, United States, CNN reported.

Expanding on the incident that occurred on Saturday evening (local time), Birmingham Police Officer Truman Fitzgerald said that two men and a woman were found "unresponsive" by officers at the incident site only to be later pronounced dead on the scene.

Providing details on the shooting, he said that multiple attackers fired several shots targeting a group of people in the Five Points South area.

Noting that no one has been arrested for the fatal incident so far, the police officer said that the victims, which also included a fourth person who died in a local hospital, were out in the open when they were targeted.

Meanwhile, more gunshot victims were identified in the area and were shifted to local hospitals.

"We have dozens of gunshot victims from this area [....] I'm told at least four of those gunshot victims are [facing] life-threatening [injuries], the others have various injuries," Fitzgerald said.

University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital spokesperson Hannah Echols told the outlet that the facility was treating at least 11 people wounded in the incident.

With police investigating the possibility of multiple shootings, detectives are probing whether the attackers approached the victims in person or targeted them via a drive-by.

So far, it is unclear how many attackers were involved in the incident and what was their motive.

The investigation is being assisted by multiple law enforcement agencies (LEAs) with Birmingham police seeking to obtain surveillance footage from nearby businesses.

"Rest assured, we are going to do everything we possibly can to make sure that we uncover, identify and hunt down who was ever responsible for preying on our people," the police officer said.

The incident adds to the long list of mass shootings, 403 to be precise, recorded in the country as per the data compiled by the Gun Violence Archive.