LAST UPDATE | 4 Jan

A TEENAGE GUNMAN killed one fellow student and wounded five other people before killing himself during a shooting Thursday at a high school in the midwestern US state of Iowa, authorities said.

Among those injured by the 17-year-old shooter were four other students and a school administrator, said Mitch Mortvedt, assistant director of the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation.

Speaking to reporters immediately after the incident at Perry High School, Dallas County Sheriff Adam Infante said: “There is no further danger to the public.

“The community is safe. We’re just not working backwards, trying to figure out everything that happened and make notifications.”

The incident occurred at around 7:30am (1:30pm GMT), before school started. Infante said this “contributed to a good outcome” because not all students and staff had arrived yet.

He said an officer arrived at the scene seven minutes after police got a call about an active shooter. 

A reunification centre was established for victims and their families, but Infante said earlier: “I think all the kids have been reunified already.”

Plagued by school shootings

Gun violence is common in the United States, a country where there are more firearms than people, and where attempts to clamp down on their spread are always met with stiff political resistance.

The country has already recorded three mass shootings this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a nongovernmental organization that defines a mass shooting as four or more people wounded or killed.

Last year ended with a total of 656 such shootings.

School shootings in particular have become a totemic reminder of the country’s political deadlock.

In May 2022, a man killed 19 students and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.

The Perry shooting comes less than two weeks before the Iowa caucus, the country’s first contest kicking off the primary season for the 2024 presidential election.

Guns are likely to once again be a hot topic of debate this election cycle, though with little legislative action expected.

With reporting by AFP