Two people killed in shooting at US primary school

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Two people have died in a shooting at a primary school in Texas, and 13 young pupils have been taken to hospital.

Uvalde city school district said an attacker opened fire on the campus of Robb Elementary School. One teacher was shot, an official told CBS.

The public has been asked to stay away as police investigate the crime scene. The shooter is in custody, police say.

Shootings at primary schools, where pupils range in age from five to 11, are still relatively rare.

The attack on Tuesday comes amid a national rise in gun violence.

The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District - around 85 miles (135km) west of the city of San Antonio - told the BBC that students had been evacuated from the school amid a shooting. The suspect was cornered after authorities arrived, and police later tweeted that the suspect was in custody.

Neither the local police nor school district confirmed the report by CBS, the BBC's partner in the US, that a teacher was among those shot, but local hospitals disclosed that students from the school were being treated by their emergency services.

A 66-year-old woman was being treated at a hospital in San Antonio, and was in a critical condition, hospital officials said earlier.

Seniors at the local high school in Uvalde, a community of about 16,000 residents, were due to graduate on Friday.

School shootings have become recurring emergencies in the US, with 26 recorded last year, according to EdWeek, an education trade publication.

Active shooter lockdown drills are a common part of the school curriculum, from primary to high school.

The 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut shocked Americans. Twenty of the 26 victims in that attack, which was carried out by a 20-year-old, were between the ages of five and six.

A 2020 report from the US Government Accountability Office found that about two-thirds of all school shootings happen at the high school level, and that shootings in elementary schools are most commonly accidental.

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