3 killed, 11 injured in Philadelphia in latest US mass shooting

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Authorities reported that three people were killed and 11 others were injured late Saturday in the US city of Philadelphia after multiple shooters opened fire on a crowd on a busy street.

The evening massacre was the latest to shake the United States, a country gripped by a gun violence pandemic that shows no signs of abating even as policymakers seek solutions to the carnage that has already taken thousands of American lives this year.

The Philadelphia Police Inspector D.F. Pace revealed that two men and a woman were killed, and officers responding to the incident "saw many active shooters shooting into the crowd."

"You can imagine there were hundreds of individuals enjoying South Street, as they did every single weekend when this shooting broke out," Pace said.

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Sadly, another in Philadelphia

— M Hope Fish (@MHopeFish2) June 5, 2022

When the first shots were fired, numerous cops patrolling the popular nightlife area were already on the scene, which a police deployment Pace described as "typical" for the region on summer weekend evenings.

Pace said one cop fired at one of the gunmen, who dropped his pistol and fled, but it was unclear whether the man was hit.

According to local media, no arrests were made, and the streets where the commotion erupted remained closed as of Sunday morning.

Pace stated that two semi-automatic weapons were seized at the scene, one of which had an extended magazine.

He added that police would have to wait until morning to review surveillance footage from nearby businesses that were closed on Saturday night.

Pace described the investigation as "fluid", saying there were still "a lot of unanswered questions."

The latest shootings occurred in Virginia, killing one, in Phoenix, killing one, and in Tulsa, killing 5. 

In recent weeks, the United States has been rocked by a succession of high-profile mass shootings, including at a school in Uvalde, Texas, a church in California, a grocery store in New York, and an Oklahoma hospital. The incidents have collectively left dozens dead.

In the United States, where there were an estimated 393 million weapons in circulation in 2020, more than the number of inhabitants, gun violence tends to surge during the warmer months.

See this: Gun violence, the leading cause of death among youth in the US

In response to the recent bloodshed in Uvalde, US President Joe Biden called for new gun control legislation, bemoaning the "everyday places that have become killing fields, battlefields here in America."

According to the Gun Violence Archive, which tracks shootings across the country, gun violence has killed 18,564 people in the United States in 2022. Nearly 10,300 of those have been suicides, it reported.

The archive recorded at least 26 more mass shootings have occurred since the Uvalde atrocity on May 24.

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