At least fifteen people were killed in the shooting that mourned a school in Texas on Tuesday, May 24, in the United States, announced the governor of the state, Greg Abbott.

The shooter "killed, in an atrocious and senseless way, fourteen students and he killed a teacher," he said at a press conference.

The 18-year-old suspect also died in the tragedy that struck Robb Elementary School in the town of Uvalde, located about 130 kilometers west of San Antonio.

More than 500 children were studying at the facility during the 2020-2021 school year, according to state data.

The motives of this attack, one of the worst in a school for years, were for the moment unknown.

Ted Cruz, Republican senator from Texas, thanked on Twitter the "heroic police forces" and the emergency services for their intervention during this "horrible shooting".

Recurring shootings

The attack plunged the country back into the throes of school shootings, which are frequently repeated with shocking images of traumatized students forced to confine themselves to their classrooms before being evacuated by law enforcement and parents panicked, desperate to hear from their children.

America was particularly marked by the drama in a high school in Parkland, Florida, which killed 17 people, the majority of them teenagers, in 2018.

Shootings in public places are almost daily in the United States and gun crime is on the rise in major cities like New York, Chicago, Miami or San Francisco, especially since the 2020 pandemic.

In mid-May, America was bereaved by a racist shooting that killed ten African Americans in a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.

With AFP

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