<div style="text-align: justify; "><b style="font-size: 1rem;">At least four people were killed and more than 20 others injured, mostly teens, in a Saturday night shooting at a birthday party in Alabama, officials said, in the latest spasm of American gun mass violence.</b><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Local news reports said the shooting occurred at a Sweet 16 party at a dance studio in Dadeville, a small town northeast of the state capital Montgomery.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"There were four lives tragically lost in this incident, and there's been a multitude of injuries," Sergeant Jeremy Burkett, a spokesman for the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency (ALEA), told reporters Sunday.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">He specified later that 28 people had been wounded, some of them critically, and urged residents to come forward with any information they might have related to the attack. But Burkett provided no further details on how the shooting unfolded or why.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Annette Allen told the Montgomery Advertiser that her grandson Phil Dowdell was among those who died: he had been celebrating his sister Alexis's 16th birthday when gunfire ripped through the party.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"He was a very, very humble child. Never messed with anybody. Always had a smile on his face," Allen said of her grandson, a high school senior and football player due to graduate within weeks.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Everybody's grieving," Allen said of the small community of some 3,000 residents.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">President Joe Biden, who was briefed on the shooting, said the nation was again grieving over young Americans killed in gun violence.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"What has our nation come to when children cannot attend a birthday party without fear?" Biden, who has long sought tighter gun safety measures, asked in a statement.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Guns are the leading killer of children in America, and the numbers are rising -- not declining," he added. "This is outrageous and unacceptable."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The nearby Lake Martin Community Hospital received 15 individual gun-shot wound patients, mostly victims in their teens, Heidi Smith, marketing director for the rural health facility's operator IvyCreek Healthcare, told AFP.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Six of the patients were discharged and nine have been transferred to facilities with higher levels of care. Of those, five were in critical condition, Smith said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"It's been terrible," she said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">More than 12 hours after the tragedy, neither Burkett nor other law enforcement officials provided any details on who may have perpetrated the shooting and why, or whether a suspect has been detained.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"We can't share anything further at this time," the sergeant said, adding only that "it was tied to a birthday party."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Dadeville Chief of Police Jonathan Floyd called the town "a tight-knit community full of wonderful people."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency said its State Bureau of Investigations has launched a probe together with Dadeville police and federal agencies including the FBI.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Television station WRBL of nearby Columbus, Georgia reported heavy police activity overnight and crime scene tape around a building in Dadeville, where it said white sheets could be seen covering parts of the floor.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">- 'Heartbreaking' -</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">State leaders took to Twitter Sunday offering prayers and decrying violence but they did not provide details on what happened.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"This morning, I grieve with the people of Dadeville and my fellow Alabamians," Governor Kay Ivey posted. "Violent crime has NO place in our state."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The United States, a country of around 330 million people, is awash with some 400 million guns, and deadly mass shootings are a regular occurrence.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The latest deaths came on the 16th anniversary of the deadliest US school shooting on record, in which 32 people were killed at Virginia Tech in 2007.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Separately, police confirmed two people were killed and four others wounded in a shooting late Saturday at a crowded park in Louisville, Kentucky, the same city where a bank employee slaughtered five people at his workplace last Monday.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">There have been 163 mass shootings in the United States so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. The non-profit group defines a mass shooting as having a minimum of four victims shot, either injured or killed, excluding any shooter.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Efforts to tighten gun controls have for years run up against opposition from Republicans, staunch defenders of the constitutional right to bear arms.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The political paralysis endures despite widespread outrage over recurring shootings. AFP</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">bnbd24/kh</div>