New Orleans police are searching for three suspects after at least 19 people were shot during a Mother’s Day parade on Sunday, Fox News reports.
Police spokeswoman Remi Braden said in an email that many of the victims were grazed and most of the wounds weren't life-threatening. No deaths were reported.
The FBI said that the shooting appeared to be "street violence" and wasn't linked to terrorism.
Fox News reported that the victims included 10 men, seven women, a boy and a girl. The children, both 10 years old, were grazed and in good condition. Police said at least two people were in surgery Sunday night.
Mary Beth Romig, a spokeswoman for the FBI in New Orleans, told Fox News federal investigators have no indication that the shooting was an act of terrorism.
"It's strictly an act of street violence in New Orleans," she said.
Officers were interspersed with the marchers, which is routine for such events. As many as 400 people joined in the procession that stretched for about 3 blocks, though only half that many were in the immediate vicinity of the shooting, the local police chief Ronal Serpas said.
Serpas said that the procession had been accompanied by officers, who saw two or three suspects run from the scene in the city's 7th Ward.
Nobody has been arrested. It's unclear what sparked the gunfire, reported Fox News.
Eleven patients have been admitted to Interim LSU Public Hospital with no life threatening injuries, hospital spokesperson Marvin McGraw said.
Sunday’s incident is the latest in a series of shooting events in the United States, the most serious of which was the massacre at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, last December. 20 children were gunned down in that incident.
After the Sandy Hook massacre, President Barack Obama pushed for stricter gun control laws, but suffered a defeat last month when the U.S. Senate voted down a compromise plan to expand background checks on firearms sales as well as a proposal to ban some semi-automatic weapons modeled after military assault weapons.
In January, Obama demanded an assault weapons ban and universal background checks for gun buyers, as he laid out the most sweeping gun control legislation in decades.
The state of New York has passed what supporters called the toughest gun ownership law in the country, becoming the first U.S. state to impose new restrictions.
Lawmakers in the lower house of the State Assembly voted 104-43 in favor of the measure, which includes a full ban on sales of military-style rifles.
After the Senate vote in April, Obama said the defeat of gun reforms was "shameful," accused senators of caving to the gun lobby, and promised to fight on.