Two teenage gunmen opened fire on Monday at the Islamic Center of San Diego, California, killing three men outside the mosque, one of them a security guard, before the two suspects were found dead, apparently from self-inflicted gunshot wounds, police said.
All of the children attending a day school that is part of the center – the largest mosque in the region near the Mexico border – were accounted for and safe after the shooting, which erupted shortly before 12 p.m. PDT (1900 GMT), according to San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl.
Wahl said the FBI was called in to assist the investigation of the incident, which the police chief said authorities were treating as a hate crime, although no motive for the gun violence has been suggested.
The attack came the week before the major Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha or Feast of the Sacrifice and the annual Hajj pilgrimage of Islamic faithful to the holy site of Mecca in Saudi Arabia.
“We have never experienced a tragedy like this before,” said Taha Hassane, the imam and director of the Islamic Center, speaking to reporters. “It is extremely outrageous to target a place of worship.”
Scores of law enforcement officers called to the scene encountered the bodies of three men affiliated with the mosque shot dead outside the building, including a security guard who officials credited with likely having helped prevent further bloodshed.
A short time later, police discovered the bodies of two teenage males, aged 17 and 19, in a vehicle in the middle of a street, dead from apparently self-inflicted gunshot wounds, the chief said at an afternoon news conference.
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At about the time police were responding en masse to gunfire at the mosque, shots also were fired at a landscaper a couple of blocks away, though authorities did not make clear whether investigators believe the two incidents were connected. The landscaper was not injured, Wahl said.
The police chief said investigators were still piecing together details of what precipitated the shooting and how the violence transpired.
Wahl said 50 to 100 police officers from across the San Diego area immediately responded to the first “active shooter” call and within four minutes had converged on the mosque, located in the residential-commercial Clairemont district of California’s second-most populous city.
Footage from local television stations showed dozens of patrol cars on a highway bridge next to the Islamic Center, with police officers aiming rifles at the facility and their vehicles surrounding the grounds.
Police in tactical gear armed with rifles were seen perched on the roof of the mosque near its dome, and TV images from the scene showed armed officers on the ground making their way through the complex.
Wahl said no shots were fired by law enforcement during the episode.
The Islamic Center in Clairemont is the largest mosque in San Diego County and houses the Bright Horizon Academy, a school providing Islamic education, according to its website.
Although random gun violence has become a common occurrence in public places across the United States, Muslim and Jewish communities have grown particularly apprehensive since U.S. and Israeli forces launched airstrikes on Iran on February 28, and Iran responded with its own air attacks on Israel and several Gulf states, sparking an intensifying war across the region.
In March, a 41-year-old Lebanese-born U.S. citizen killed himself after crashing his truck into the largest Jewish temple in Michigan, opening fire on security guards and causing an explosion with fireworks. The synagogue near Detroit, like the San Diego mosque, housed a day school.
(Reporting by Mike Blake )
