Nine dead in Nebraska mall shooting

OMAHA, Nebraska (Reuters) - A gunman opened fire inside a crowded shopping mall in Omaha, Nebraska, on Wednesday, killing eight people and then himself, police said.

Five people were wounded in the rampage at the Westroads Mall, two of them critically, according to hospital spokesmen. One man with a chest wound was in surgery.

Witnesses reported hearing as many as two dozen gunshots, telling a local television station the gunman shot one man in the head from a third-floor balcony and others at point-blank range as he moved through the mall.

"It was horrible, just horrible," one woman told KETV, saying she hid under a clothes rack when the shooting started.

Another witness at the mall, busy with pre-Christmas shoppers, said she heard someone shout: "It's a gunman, run!"

Most of the victims were shot inside one department store and the motive for the rampage was still being investigated, said Sgt. Teresa Negron of the Omaha Police Department.

"We do not believe that we have any other shooter," she told reporters. "The person we believe to be the shooter has died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound."

Mass shootings periodically shock the United States, where gun ownership is widespread and the right to bear arms is a hotly contested constitutional issue.

In mid-April, Virginia Tech university became the site of the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history when a student killed 32 people and then himself.