Texas Walmart Shooting Leaves 20 Dead

By BBC

Twenty people have been killed and 26 injured in a mass shooting at a Walmart store in the Texas City of El Paso.

Governor Greg Abbott described it as "one of the most deadly days in the history of Texas". Police are investigating whether the attack, which happened a few miles from the US-Mexico border, was a hate crime. A 21-year-old man is in custody.

Police said the suspect lived in Allen, Dallas, about 650 miles (1,046km) east of El Paso. He has been named by US media as Patrick Crusius. CCTV images said to be of the gunman and broadcast on US media show a man in a dark T-shirt wearing ear protectors and brandishing an assault-style rifle.

The Texas shooting is believed to be the eighth deadliest in modern US history. It came less than 24 hours before another mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio, and less than a week after a teenage gunman killed three people at a California food festival. The police and FBI are investigating whether an anonymous white nationalist "manifesto", shared on an online forum, was written by the gunman.

The document claims the attack was targeted at the local Hispanic community. US President Donald Trump described the attack as "an act of cowardice". "I know that I stand with everyone in this country to condemn today's hateful act. There are no reasons or excuses that will ever justify killing innocent people," he wrote on Twitter. The victims of the attack have not yet been named. However, Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said three Mexicans were among those killed, according to Reuters news agency.