Police sergeant praised for ending shooting rampage
Major Nidal Malik Hasan, a devout American-born Muslim, was shot several times in the aftermath of the rampage by a civilian police officer who was yesterday being hailed as a hero.
Lt Gen Cone said Sgt Kimberly Munley and her partner responded to reported gunfire within three minutes.
She then disabled the suspect despite being shot herself in the process.
"It was an amazing and an aggressive performance by this police officer," the military spokesman said. Shortly before her arrival, Hasan -- armed with two non-military issue pistols including a semi- automatic -- entered a section used to prepare soldiers for deployment overseas and started firing.
Within minutes, 12 soldiers and a civilian at the base were dead or dying in the worst mass shooting yet at a military base in the US.
At least 30 others were injured in an attack described by President Barack Obama as a "horrific outburst of violence".
Soldiers rushed to treat their wounded colleagues by ripping their uniforms into makeshift bandages.
Around half of those injured required surgery after being evacuated to hospital.
The shootings began at around 1.30pm local time (7.30pm GMT) at Fort Hood's readiness centre.
The compound -- the US's largest military base -- observed a day of mourning yesterday.
President Obama ordered federal buildings to fly the US flag at half-mast until Veterans' Day (November 11) as a "modest tribute" to the dead at Fort Hood. In brief remarks delivered in the White House Rose Garden, the president said he had met FBI chiefs to be updated on the investigation.
"We don't know all the answers yet and I would caution against jumping to conclusions until we have all the facts.
"What we do know is that there are families, friends and an entire nation grieving right now for the valiant men and and women who came under attack yesterday in one of the worst mass shootings to take place on an American military base."
A former soldier whose brother was killed in the Fort Hood rampage said yesterday that it was "unfathomable" that a fellow serviceman could turn his gun on his comrades. Craig Pearson said he and his family had been prepared that his younger brother, Michael, might die in Afghanistan -- where he was due to be deployed in January -- but were "completely blindsided" when he was killed by Hasan.
Mr Pearson himself trained at Fort Hood and had encouraged Michael (21) to join the army because it had helped him to "grow up really fast".
Speaking from the family home in Chicago, he said his brother "had found a new side to himself".
Mr Pearson said he could not understand an American soldier being prepared to do what Hasan had done.
"You all watch each other's backs -- that's the way the military works," he said.
Fort Hood did not immediately release the names of the dead and wounded but one relative recounted what she had heard.
Peggy McCarty said that her daughter, Specialist Keara Bono, a 21- year-old army reservist, was on the phone to her husband when the shooting started.
He heard shots and shouting before the line went dead. The soldier later rang her mother to say she had been shot in the shoulder.
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