Motive probed for U.S. army shooting rampage

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By Erwin Seba

KILLEEN, Texas (Reuters) - Investigators on Friday searched for the motive behind a mass shooting at a sprawling U.S. army base in Texas, in which an army psychiatrist trained to treat war wounded is suspected of killing 13 people.

A spokesman at the base said the suspected gunman, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, a lifelong Muslim born in the United States of immigrant parents, had been shot four times by security police and was unconscious but in stable condition.

A woman died overnight from her wounds, raising the toll from Thursday's incident to 13 dead and 30 wounded, said Colonel John Rossi, a spokesman at Fort Hood, the biggest military facility in the world.

Hasan was "stable and in one of our civilian hospitals," Rossi said. "He's on a ventilator."

The Army refused to discuss possible motives for the shooting while the investigation is under way. "We're not going to speculate on motives," Rossi told reporters at the base, from where thousands of troops are deployed to combat zones.

The gunman, with two guns including a semi-automatic weapon, opened fire apparently without warning at the crowded Soldiers Readiness Processing Centre, where troops were getting medical check-ups before leaving for foreign deployments.

Hasan, 39, had spent years counselling severely wounded and traumatized soldiers at the Walter Reed Army Medical Centre in Washington, D.C., many of whom had lost limbs during combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He had been transferred to Fort Hood in April and was to have been deployed to Afghanistan, where the U.S. military is engaged in an increasingly bloody war against Taliban and al Qaeda fighters.

DEPLOYMENT 'NIGHTMARE'

His cousin, Nader Hasan, has said in media interviews that he was very reluctant to be deployed overseas and had agitated not to be sent. "We've known over the last five years that was probably his worst nightmare," he said.

Nader Hasan also said his cousin had complained, as a Muslim, of harassment by fellow soldiers.

American Muslim groups issued statements expressing regret over the incident and stressing that it appeared to have been carried out by a single disturbed individual.

"Thousands of Arab Americans and American Muslims serve honourably everyday in all four branches of the U.S. military and in the National Guard," the Arab American Institute said.

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee deplored the shooting by what it called a "rogue" gunman, but suggested Muslim American communities take special precautions "due to the potential of a backlash against these communities."

The Fort Hood commander, Lieutenant-General Robert Cone, speaking to reporters, said: "There are reports, unconfirmed, that (the gunman) was saying "Allah akbar" (God is great)." But he said there was no evidence this was a terrorist attack.

The United States has been engaged in six years of fighting in Iraq and nearly eight years of war in Afghanistan which has put extra stress on the military and on individual soldiers, many of whom have been on several combat tours.

In May, a U.S. soldier at a base in Baghdad shot and killed five fellow soldiers.

Fort Hood personnel have accounted for more suicides than any other Army post since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, with 75 tallied through July of this year. Nine of those occurred in 2009, counting two in overseas war zones.

Rossi said Thursday's shooting lasted 10 minutes. He said a female civilian police officer was the first to wound the gunman, who was wearing military garb. The officer - identified as Kim Munley -- is in stable condition, after originally being listed as among the dead, he said.

Sergeant Andrew Hagerman, a military police officer who said he was one of the first on the scene, said Hasan was prone and unconscious when he arrived.

"You're always surprised at how much carnage there is," said Hagerman, who returned in July 2008 from a tour of duty in Iraq.

Fort Hood, about 60 miles (97 km) from the state capital Austin, is home to about 50,000 troops. Established in 1942, it stretches across 339 square miles (878 square km) in central Texas and is the state's largest single employer.

(Writing by Chris Baltimore, editing by David Storey)

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