At least five children injured in shooting at Catholic school in Minneapolis

At least five children have been injured in a shooting during the first week of classes at a Catholic school in Minneapolis, authorities and a hospital said.

Governor Tim Walz called the violence “horrific”.

The Minneapolis city government said the attacker had been “contained” after the gunfire at Annunciation Catholic School and there was no longer any “active threat” to residents.

Mr Walz said on social media that he had been briefed on the shooting.

“I’m praying for our kids and teachers whose first week of school was marred by this horrific act of violence,” he wrote on X.

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

Hennepin Healthcare, which has Minnesota’s largest emergency department, said it was also caring for patients from the shooting.

Bill Bienemann, who lives a few streets away and has long attended Mass at Annunciation Church, said he heard dozens of shots, perhaps as many as 50, over as long as four minutes.

“I was shocked. I said, ‘There’s no way that could be gunfire’,” he said.

“There was so much of it. It was sporadic.”

Mr Bienemann’s daughter, Alexandra, said she attended the school from kindergarten to eighth grade, finishing in 2014.

After she heard of the shooting, she said she was shaking and crying, and her boss told her to take the day off.

“It breaks my heart, makes me sick to my stomach, knowing that there are people I know who are either injured or maybe even killed,” Alexandra Bienemann said.

“It doesn’t make me feel safe at all in this community that I have been in for so long.”

The school was evacuated, and students’ families were later directed to a “reunification zone” at the school.

Outside, amid a heavy uniformed law enforcement presence, were uniformed children in their dark green shirts or dresses.

Many were trickling out of the school with adults, giving lingering hugs and wiping away tears.

Local, state, county and federal law enforcement officers and agents converged on the area.

On Truth Social, President Donald Trump said he was briefed on the “tragic shooting” and that the White House would continue to monitor it.

Dating to 1923, the pre-kindergarten through eighth grade school had an all-school Mass scheduled at 8.15am local time on Wednesday, according to its website.

Monday was the first day of school.

Recent social media posts from the school show children smiling at a back-to-school event, holding up summer art projects, playing together and enjoying ice pops.

At a meeting of Democratic officials elsewhere in Minneapolis, Democratic National Committee chairman Ken Martin noted the shooting and “unknown amount of victims”.

The gunfire was the latest in a series of shootings in the city in less than 24 hours.

One person was killed and six others were hurt in a shooting on Tuesday afternoon outside a high school in Minneapolis.

Hours later, two people died in two other shootings in the city.

Wednesday’s school shooting also followed a spate of hoax calls about purported shootings on at least a dozen US college campuses.

The bogus warnings, sometimes featuring gunshot sounds in the background, prompted universities to issue texts to “run, hide, fight” and frightened students around the nation as the school year begins.