FORT HOOD, US - An army officer about to be deployed to Iraq has gunned down 12 people and wounded 31 others at a sprawling Texas military base before being shot and taken into custody.
Major Nidal Malik Hasan, a US Army psychiatrist, opened fire Thursday with a semi-automatic weapon and a handgun at a Fort Hood medical processing center for troops being deployed overseas to Iraq and Afghanistan, officials said.
It is believed to have been the worst ever mass shooting at a US military base. Two civilians were among those wounded.
Base commander Lieutenant General Bob Cone said Hasan, whom he described as the lone gunman, was now in custody "in stable condition" after being shot multiple times.
After interviewing over 100 people at the scene, authorities appeared to have ruled out the possibility of a second shooter. Hasan, 39, was "not currently speaking to investigators," Cone said, after wrongly telling reporters earlier that the gunman was dead.
The shooting spree dealt a blow to an American military already under severe strain from repeated combat tours during years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan and plagued by a rise in suicides and depression.
Army suicides hit a record level last year, with at least 128 taking their own lives, and are on track to set a new high this year -- surpassing the rate among the wider civilian population.
Fort Hood, a central Texas base the size of a small town that houses tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians, was locked down after the shooting for several hours as the shocked community searched for a possible motive.
The shooter's cousin said the major was "mortified by the idea of having to deploy" and that Hasan had been harassed by other soldiers for being a Muslim.
"He wanted to do whatever he could within the rules to make sure he wouldn't go over," Nader Hasan told The New York Times, adding that his cousin had retained a lawyer and sought to get out of the army before the end of his contract.
The army major was born in the United States to Palestinian parents who had emigrated from a small town near Jerusalem, Nader Hasan added.
Many of the victims, most military personnel, were taken to a local hospital, which put out an urgent call for blood donations as streams of wounded poured into its emergency rooms.
Fort Hood, the biggest US military base in the world, is the headquarters of the Army 3rd Corps, the 4th Infantry Division and the 1st Cavalry Division. All those units have seen extensive duty in Iraq.
Fatal shootings are rare at US military bases.
The US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 is viewed by critics as an 'act of aggression' that violated international law.
Subsequent US occupation policies caused the country to descend into almost total chaos, bordering on civil war.
An estimated 1.3 million Iraqis have been killed in Iraq as a direct result of the invasion, while millions more have fled the country.
Critics argue that the recent stability announced in the country should not excuse the 'crime' of invading Iraq, calling for the prosecution of the war's architects for 'crimes against humanity'.
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