By Staff, Agencies

At least four people have been killed and 28 wounded in a shooting at a “Sweet 16” birthday party in the United States, according to police and media reports.

The gun attack in the small town of Dadeville in the southern US state of Alabama took place late on Saturday night, authorities said on Sunday.

There was no official word on what led to the violence.

During two news conferences on Sunday, Sergeant Jeremy Burkett of the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency did not take questions. He did not say if a suspect was in custody or if investigators knew about any motivation. He did not provide the names of those killed.

“We’re going to continue to work in a very methodical way to go through this scene, to look at the facts, and ensure that justice is brought to bear for the families,” he said.

The Montgomery Advertiser newspaper reported that one of the four people killed during the violence was a high school football player who was among those attending his sister’s “Sweet 16” birthday party when a gunman opened fire.

The newspaper, quoting the victim’s grandmother, identified the slain teenager as Philstavious “Phil” Dowdell, whom she said was set to graduate in a matter of weeks and planned to attend Jacksonville State University on a football scholarship.

The bloodshed in Alabama marked the third high-profile mass shooting in as many weeks in southern US, following separate outbreaks of deadly gun violence in Tennessee and Kentucky that prompted local leaders to call for tighter gun control measures.

Dadeville itself was shaken by at least one prior mass shooting in August of 2016, when a gunman wounded five people during a party at an American Legion hall, according to the Montgomery Advertiser.

The killings in Dadeville came five days after a bank employee shot dead five colleagues and wounded nine other people at his workplace in Louisville, Kentucky.

On March 27, three nine-year-olds and three staff members were killed at a private Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee, by a former student.

Mass shootings have become commonplace in the US, with more than 163 so far in 2023, the most at this point in the year since at least 2016, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

The nonprofit group defines a mass shooting as any in which four or more people are wounded or killed, not including the shooter.