Las Vegas: A gunman on October 1 killed at least 58 people and wounded more than 515 others at a country music festival on the Las Vegas Strip.
Police killed the man who rained down rapid fire from the 32nd floor of a hotel for several minutes.
The death toll, which police emphasized was preliminary and tentative, would make the attack the deadliest mass shooting in US history, eclipsing last year’s massacre of 49 people at an Orlando night club, reports ndtv.com.
Thousands of panicked people fled the scene, in some cases trampling one another as law enforcement officers scrambled to locate and kill the gunman. Shocked concertgoers, some with blood on their clothes, wandered the streets after the attack.
The suspect was a local Las Vegas man who acted alone and was not believed to be connected to any militant group, Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo told reporters.
The gunman has been identified by the police as Stephen Paddock. The shooter’s 62-year-old companion, an Asian-American woman identified as Marilou Danley, has been located, the police added.
“We have no idea what his belief system was,” Lombardo said. “Right now, we believe he was the sole aggressor and the scene is static.”
Police had located two cars that belonged to Paddock.
They said that rumors of other shootings in the area were false.
Las Vegas’s casinos, nightclubs and shopping draw some 3.5 million visitors from around the world each year and the area was packed with visitors when the shooting broke out shortly after 10 p.m. (0400 GMT).
Witnesses on social media said the shooting broke out on the last night of the three-day Route 91 Harvest festival, a sold-out event attended by thousands and featuring top acts such as Eric Church, Sam Hunt and Jason Aldean.
The spokeswoman for the University Medical Center hospital said 14 of the wounded were in a critical condition. All had suffered gunshot wounds, she said.
Police warned the death toll may rise.
Las Vegas is an internationally renowned major resort city, known primarily for its gambling, shopping and entertainment.
The hotel is near McCarran International Airport, which said on Twitter it had temporarily halted flights after the shooting. Later, the airport said that some flights had resumed.
One Twitter user posted that the casino hotel was on lockdown, while another, citing police scanners, said two gunmen who had shot at a bodyguard and police were on the 32nd floor, although there was no confirmation from police.
Video clips posted online showed what sounded like automatic weapons as panicked concertgoers fled, dropped to the ground screaming.
Witnesses heard numerous gunshots at the hotel, where police tactical teams were searching for the attacker, according to reports on CNN and in the New York Times.
Police have disclosed no information that would suggest a motive for the shooting or revealed the identity of the suspect.
The United States has seen a series of deadly mass shootings in recent years. Prior to Orlando, the deadliest occurred in April 2007 when a gunman killed 32 people at Virginia Tech university and in December 2012 a man killed 26 young children and educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.