Two children, aged eight and 10, have been killed in a shooting during mass at a school in Minneapolis.

An attacker opened fire with a rifle through the windows of a church at Annunciation Catholic School and struck a group of children as they sat in pews on Wednesday morning.

The FBI has confirmed the killer has been identified as Robin Westman, a male born as Robert Westman, and is investigating the shooting as an “act of domestic terrorism” and a “hate crime targeting Catholics”.

As it happened: FBI says attack investigated as ‘terrorism’

The city’s police chief Brian O’Hara said the attacker – armed with a rifle, shotgun, and pistol – approached the side of the church and fired dozens of rounds as mass was celebrated during the first week of term.

He added that 17 other people were injured, including 14 children, two of whom were in a critical condition.

Police believe the suspect, thought to be in his early 20s and acting alone, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Mr O’Hara called the attack in Minnesota a “deliberate act of violence against innocent children and other people worshipping”.

“The sheer cruelty and cowardice of firing into a church full of children is absolutely incomprehensible.”

He also said a wooden plank had been used to barricade some side doors.

Authorities found a smoke bomb but no explosives at the scene, Mr O’Hara said.

Three adults in 80s among those injured

Hennepin Healthcare, the main trauma hospital in Minneapolis, received 11 patients, including nine children – aged six to 14 – and two adults, emergency medicine chair Dr Thomas Wyatt said.

He said four of the patients were taken to operating rooms.

Children’s Minnesota, a paediatric trauma hospital, said in a statement that five children were admitted.

At a later news conference, Mr O’Hara said three adults in their 80s are among those injured in the attack.

He added that Westman had scheduled a manifesto to be released on YouTube, which “appeared to show him at the scene and included some disturbing writings”.

The video has since been taken down with the assistance of the FBI.

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‘So much’ gunfire, witness says

Bill Bienemann, a witness to the shooting, told Sky News it went on “for several minutes – a long time for live gunfire”.

“I know what gunfire sounds like, and I was shocked,” he added. “I said there’s no way that could be gunfire, there was so much of it.

“It seemed like a rifle, it certainly didn’t sound like a handgun, so he must have reloaded several times.”

The pre-kindergarten through eighth-grade school had an all-school mass scheduled at 8.15am local time on Wednesday morning (2.15pm UK time), according to its website.

Monday was the first day of the school semester.

Mayor calls shooting ‘unspeakable act’

At the first news conference, Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey said the shooting was an “unspeakable act”.

“Children are dead,” he said. “There are families that have a deceased child. You cannot put into words the gravity, the tragedy, or the absolute pain of this situation.”

Speaking later, and joined by Governor Tim Walz, Mr Frey said that the “Minneapolis family” has stepped up in “thousands of different ways” after the shooting.

“The way that they acted during the severe threat and danger was nothing short of heroic,” he says.

“This is a tragic and horrible event that should never occur.”

He added: “Anybody who is using this as an opportunity to villainise our trans community or any other community out there has lost their sense of common humanity.”

Mr Walz said: “We often come to these and say these are unspeakable tragedies or there are no words for this, there shouldn’t be words for these types of incidents because they shouldn’t happen.”

The school’s headteacher Matt DeBoer added: “To any of our students and families and staff watching right now, I love you. You’re so brave, and I’m so sorry this happened.”

Senator: Girl ‘had to watch several of her friends get shot’

Speaking to MSNBC, Democratic senator Amy Klobuchar said she had called one of her longtime employees who had three children in the school during the shooting.

The senator described the call with the mother as “one of the most upsetting things I’ve ever heard”.

“These kids are doing an all-school mass and had to watch several of her friends get shot – one in the back, one in the neck,” Ms Klobuchar added.

“And they all got down under the pews and she – her daughter, of course, was not shot – but her daughter ended up being the one to tell one of the dads of one of the other kids that his daughter had been shot.”

Responding to the reports, US President Donald Trump said on Truth Social: “I have been fully briefed on the tragic shooting in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

“The FBI quickly responded and they are on the scene. The White House will continue to monitor this terrible situation.”

The Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations has condemned Israel’s attack on Nasser Hospital as “a premeditated strike on medics and journalists”.

The envoy’s comments are the latest condemnation of the 25 August attack that killed 22 people, including five journalists. They come as an investigation by Sky News raises new questions about the incident.

The IDF said the strike targeted an “observation camera” used by Hamas to monitor troop movements from the hospital, adding that six of those killed were “terrorists”.

But the camera that the IDF struck was broadcasting a live stream for the news agency Reuters, and the IDF has said that the journalist operating this camera was “not a target”.

The Israeli military has not indicated that any other camera was on the balcony, and the hospital’s director says the only person on the balcony was the Reuters journalist.

Sky News did find evidence that one of the six people named by the IDF was a militant, but we also found evidence that he was killed in a separate incident, not at Nasser Hospital.

Most of those killed died when the IDF launched a second strike on the same stairwell, around eight minutes after the first, as rescue efforts were under way. Video seen by Sky News shows two missiles hitting the hospital in the second strike.

Speaking at the UN Security Council on 27 August, Palestinian UN envoy Riyad Mansour said: “The second strike on Nasser hospital was a premeditated strike on medics and journalists who arrived at the scene after the first strike.

“While the world demands a permanent ceasefire, Israel continues its crimes. Where else is the killing of so many civilians and journalists tolerated?”

Here’s what we know

At around 10am on Monday 25 August, journalist Hossam Al Masri, 49, was operating a Reuters live stream from the top floor of Nasser Hospital, in Khan Younis.

Footage from the livestream shows Hossam filming the busy market outside the hospital, before raising the camera and zooming in on a cloud of black smoke rising in the distance.

At that moment, the feed froze. Reports emerged, starting at 10.09am, of an explosion at the hospital.

Soon, footage showed smoke rising over the building, and a chunk of concrete missing from the exterior stairwell where Hossam had been filming.

Journalists and rescue workers quickly rushed to the site in search of survivors. They found two bodies, including Hossam’s.

At 10.17am, as rescue efforts continued, a second Israeli strike hit the stairwell.

Three loud bangs could be heard at the moment of impact.

Footage from the ground shows at least two projectiles impacting in quick succession, with just milliseconds between them.

An Israeli military official told the Press Association that the strikes were carried out by tanks.

Amael Kotlarski, weapons team manager at defence intelligence company Janes, told Sky News that the shape of the projectile and resulting damage is consistent with powered, precision-guided munitions such as Lahat laser-guided missiles.

These can be fired from tanks or helicopters. “The IDF is known to have stocks of the air-launched version, it is unclear if the gun-launched version were procured,” he says.

“If these Lahats were fired from the ground, then at least two tanks would have been involved, as the interval between the two impacts is far too short.”

Sky News analysis of the footage suggests that the projectiles were fired from the northeast.

Satellite imagery taken approximately five hours after the attack shows six tanks stationed at a fortified base around 2.4km northeast of the hospital, though Sky News is unable to say whether they were involved in the attack.

Why did Israel attack the hospital?

Footage filmed from the ground shows smoke billowing out of the hospital as people flee.

As the smoke cleared, rescue workers returned to the scene. What they saw is too graphic to publish – at least seven bodies scattered throughout the stairwell.

Health officials have since put the total number killed at 22, including a rescue worker, a doctor, three hospital staff and five journalists.

On Tuesday, the IDF said that Israeli troops had targeted a camera “that was positioned by Hamas in the area of the Nasser Hospital [and] that was being used to observe the activity of IDF troops”.

However, Sky News has confirmed that the initial strike hit Reuters cameraman Hossam Al Masri, who was operating a livestream for the international news agency at the time of the attack.

Footage from the aftermath of the first strike shows that it hit the top balcony on the hospital’s exterior stairwell.

Sky News was able to confirm that the livestream recorded by Hossam was taken from this balcony, based on the buildings visible and a wooden beam obstructing the camera’s field of view.

This conclusion is supported by eyewitness testimony, as well as the fact that the feed cut unexpectedly, but without showing any attack on the hospital, and that Al Masri’s death was the first to be reported, at 10.18am.

The IDF said that Al Masri was “not a target” of the strike. It did not specify whether his camera was the same one it believes was positioned and used by Hamas.

The IDF has not suggested that there was any other camera on the balcony.

Speaking to Sky News on Wednesday, the director of Nasser Hospital, Dr Atef Al Hout, said that Hossam “was the only one on that floor in that moment”.

On Monday, Israeli outlet Channel 12 published an undated aerial photograph of a camera, shared by an anonymous military source, which Sky News matched to the same balcony.

The unnamed source pointed to a white towel placed over the camera as evidence that it was being concealed.

Medics and journalists at Nasser Hospital told Sky News that towels, such as the one visible in the photo, are used to prevent cameras from overheating, and this specific location is frequently used by media workers.

Reuters had been delivering daily livestreams from the position for several weeks before the attack.

And the video below, uploaded on 10 June, shows multiple journalists using the space to record video or get phone signal.

Among those visible in the video are journalists Mariam Abu Daqqa and Mohammed Salama, who were killed in Monday’s attack.

“This is among the deadliest Israeli attacks on journalists working for international media since the Gaza war began,” the Foreign Press Association said in a statement on Monday, adding the strikes came “with no warning”.

Brian Finucane, who spent a decade advising the US State Department on conflict law, says hospitals are protected from attack under international law.

“Hospitals may lose this protection if they are used to commit acts harmful to the enemy outside of their normal humanitarian function – but only if prior advance warning is given to allow for the termination of such harmful acts,” he says.

Former United States Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Stephen Rapp told Sky News that “an independent investigation is clearly warranted”.

Sky News asked the IDF whether any advance warning was provided to the hospital, but did not receive a response to this question.

Hamas denied using the camera targeted by the IDF, describing this allegation as “a baseless allegation devoid of any evidence, intended solely to evade legal and moral responsibility for a fully-fledged massacre”.

Who was killed?

In its statement on Tuesday, the IDF said that six of those killed were “terrorists” and part of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Sky News examined social media pages and obituaries for each of these six people.

We found evidence that one of those named, Omar Abu Teim, had been a combatant.

But while obituaries by family and friends of the other five individuals all reference the attack on Nasser Hospital, those for Abu Teim do not.

A neighbour and childhood friend of Abu Teim’s told us he had died while taking part in an attack on a new IDF position east of Khan Younis – not at Nasser Hospital.

A Hamas-branded obituary identifies Abu Teim as a “hero of the storming of the new site” alongside four others. Sky News has not been able to verify whether Abu Teim was formally part of Hamas or a different militant group.

Ramy Abdu of Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor told Sky News his team saw the Abu Teim family searching for their son’s body the day before the hospital strike, adding that the body has still not been recovered.

Abu Teim’s neighbour also said his body has not been recovered, and Gaza’s health ministry told Sky News it had not received his body in any of its hospitals.

The IDF told Sky News it was examining whether Abu Teim was killed in a separate incident.

Hamas has denied that any of its fighters were killed in the attack on Nasser Hospital.

No explanation given for second strike

The Israeli military has not explained the reason for the second strike on the stairwell, which occurred while rescue efforts were under way and caused the greatest number of deaths.

Such ‘double-tap’ strikes carry significant risks for emergency personnel and journalists, who often gather at the scene of attacks.

Sky News asked the IDF who was being targeted in the second strike, but the military did not respond to this question.

Emily Tripp, executive director of conflict monitoring group Airwars, says that double-tap strikes are something they have seen “consistently” throughout the war, although the intensity of the bombardment has made it difficult to confirm timings.

Her team has documented 24 separate double-tap strikes across Gaza since the war began.

At least 190 journalists have been killed in Gaza since the war began, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

The Aid Worker Security Database has also documented 536 killings of aid and rescue workers as of 2 August. This number does not include the 139 reported deaths among workers from Gaza’s Civil Defence rescue agency.

Reuters did not respond to a request for comment.

Additional reporting by Freya Gibson, OSINT producer, and production by Michelle Inez Simon and Celine Al Khaldi.

The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.

A suspect who shot and killed two police officers and seriously injured a third in Australia’s rural south-east has been identified, police said. 

A manhunt is underway for Dezi Freeman, 56, who is heavily armed and experienced in wilderness survival skills, Victoria state’s chief commissioner of police Mike Bush told reporters.

The local residents have been urged to stay indoors.

The whereabouts of Freeman’s wife and two children were initially unknown, but Mr Bush said they had visited a police station and spoken to officers late on Tuesday night.

The shooting happened earlier on Tuesday, when 10 armed police officers tried to execute a search warrant at Freeman’s property in Porepunkah, a town of just over 1,000 people located 200 miles north-east of Melbourne.

The officers “were met by the offender and they were murdered in cold blood,” the police chief said.

Freeman killed a 59-year-old detective and a 35-year-old senior constable, Mr Bush said. Another detective was shot, but his wounds are not life-threatening.

The armed man fled alone on foot into the nearby forest, where an intensive search for him continued through the night and into Wednesday.

Mr Bush would not elaborate on the search warrant for Freeman’s property and said it was “too soon to say” if his attack on the officers was ideologically motivated.

But he told reporters that some of the officers who tried to execute the search warrant included members of a unit that investigates sexual offences and child abuse.

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Australian media widely reported that Freeman expressed so-called sovereign citizen beliefs, referencing a 2021 video from Wangaratta Magistrates’ Court in which he is seen representing himself and unsuccessfully trying to arrest a magistrate and police officers.

Members of self-proclaimed sovereign citizen movements use debunked legal theories to reject government authority.

In a 2024 finding from Victoria’s Supreme Court, where Freeman attempted to challenge a lengthy suspension of his driver’s licence, a judge noted that the man had “a history of unpleasant encounters with police officers”.

In his submissions to the court, Freeman referred to the officers as “Nazis” and “terrorist thugs”.

The chief commissioner would not say how much was known of Freeman’s beliefs before the visit to his property.

Porepunkah, famous for its vineyards and beautiful views, is a gateway to Victoria’s alpine tourist region.

On Tuesday, public buildings and the nearby airfield were shut, and the local school, with just over 100 students, was locked down for several hours before children and staff were permitted to leave.

“Be vigilant, keep yourselves safe,” Mr Bush urged residents on Wednesday. “Please don’t go outside if you don’t need to.”

Mr Bush said the suspect’s knowledge of outdoor survival skills posed a “challenge” to authorities.