Police are searching for multiple suspects after a shooting in the US city of Baltimore left two people dead and 28 others injured.

Fifteen children were among those wounded when gunfire erupted at a block party in the Brooklyn Homes area of the city on Sunday.

Surveillance footage from a building showed people fleeing the shooting.

It is not clear whether the attack was targeted, police said, and officers are hunting for at least two suspects.

At a news conference on Monday police announced a reward of $28,000 (£22,000) for information on the suspects.

Authorities said multiple weapons and bullet casings were recovered from the scene of the crime.

Police have yet to name a suspect, but said a young man who has been seen in footage circulating on social media appearing to pull a semi-automatic weapon from a backpack is one of the suspects.

"Anyone who had a weapon at the scene will be one of our suspects until we eliminate that they are not," said Baltimore Police Department acting commissioner Richard Worley.

The shooting began at about 00:35 local time (04:35 GMT) in a courtyard between a pair of rowhouses in the south of the city. Investigators spent hours on Sunday combing a large crime scene for evidence.

Police said 18-year-old Aaliyah Gonzalez died at the scene, while 20-year-old Kylis Fagbemi was pronounced dead at hospital.

The victims were mostly teenagers, ranging in age from 13 to 19. The others were aged 20, 22, 23, 31 and 32, according to police.

As of Monday afternoon, seven victims remained in hospital, including four who are in critical condition.

Hospital officials said they worked under stressful circumstances with the assailants still at large to treat 19 patients, many of whom were minors and critically injured.

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott said his office was dedicating every resource possible to finding those responsible.

"We will not stop until we find you - and we will find you," he said. "This was a reckless, cowardly act that happened here."

"I hope that with every single breath that you take that you think about the lives that you took and you think about the lives that you impacted here tonight," he said.

Mr Worley told reporters on Sunday that the block party - an annual community gathering known as "Brooklyn Day" - was "unpermitted", because police were not warned about it ahead of time.

He added that officials would examine what actions officers took once they found out about the gathering.

Witnesses at the scene said hundreds of people were at the party when the chaotic scene unfolded.

Danny Gonzalez, 57, who is not related to the woman who died in the shooting, told the Washington Post that he heard gunshots from his home and saw young people running away.

"It was at least 40 or 50 rounds," he said, adding that he and his neighbours were no strangers to gunfire in the Maryland port city. "It's just another killing weekend. This is Baltimore, Murderland."

There have been 140 homicides this year in Baltimore, according to the Baltimore Sun newspaper. In 2022, the city reported more than 300 killings for the eighth year in a row.

Local authorities said the shooting would result in long-lasting trauma for the community, while Mayor Scott called for stricter gun laws across the US.

"This is our longest standing public health challenge, and we need to focus on gun violence regardless of where it happens," he said on Monday.

The US has seen more than 330 mass shootings this year, according to the non-profit Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people are injured or killed.

Source:
courtesy of BBC NEWS

by Madeline Halpert | BBC News

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