Five teens hurt in shooting near US school: police

LOS ANGELES - A shooting near a US high school left five teenagers wounded on Monday, police said.

Officers in Aurora, Colorado were called to a park near Central High School where they found five people aged between 14 and 17 had been hurt, the Aurora Police Department said.

"Unknown suspect who is no longer on scene," the police said on Twitter. "5 total people have been transported to the hospital.

"Incident did not happen inside of the school but just north at Nome Park."

After a year spent largely learning online, US schools have returned to the classroom, reviving the fear of on-campus shootings, with multiple small-scale incidents reported in recent weeks.

More than 256,000 students have been exposed to gun violence in US schools since 13 people were killed in the massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999, according to data compiled by The Washington Post.

The figure includes those caught up in the violence, such as witnesses, and those forced to evacuate educational institutions when gunfire erupted.

According to a Post database, there were 29 school shootings in the United States in 2018 and 27 in 2019. The Post figures do not include shootings at colleges or universities, suicides or accidental discharges.

The deadliest recent school shooting in the United States took place in 2018, when 17 people were killed by a former student at a high school in Parkland, Florida.

AFP