Las Vegas shooting is easily the deadliest massacre in modern US history

At least 58 people are dead and hundreds are injured

Andrew Griffin
Monday 02 October 2017 20:15 BST
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Law enforcement officers are shown on Las Vegas Boulevard South on October 2, 2017, after a mass shooting during a music festival in Las Vegas, Nevada
Law enforcement officers are shown on Las Vegas Boulevard South on October 2, 2017, after a mass shooting during a music festival in Las Vegas, Nevada (Reuters)

The massacre in Las Vegas is easily the most deadly mass shooting in the modern history of the US.

At least 58 people were killed and 515 injured when Stephen Paddock opened fire on a music festival in Las Vegas. Witnesses reported bullets firing down from a hotel near the Las Vegas strip, and being forced to hide until police found the shooter's room, later discovering him dead.

They described how they ran for their lives after initially thinking the explosions were firecrackers or fireworks.

The attack is already the most deadly shooting in the history of the US, by some way. With time, the true number of people killed is likely to appear, and the death toll will rise.

All four of the deadliest mass shootings in the last two decades happened over the last four years. Until the shooting in Las Vegas, the largest death toll in recent history was the Pulse nightclub shooting – when a man walked into a gay nightclub and gunned down revellers, killing 49 and injuring 53.

The historic massacre immediately led to calls for more gun regulation, from people including Hillary Clinton. It isn't clear what weapons Paddock used in the attack.

In all, he is said to have had 10 rifles in his hotel room. Police still don't know how he managed to take all those weapons into the hotel room, or what the motive behind the attack was.

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