At least 22 people were killed and dozens injured Wednesday in a series of gunmen’s attacks in Lewiston, in the northeastern US state of Maine, a local official told CNN by phone.

“We have 22 confirmed dead and many, many injured,” said Robert McCarthy, a city councilor in the city of about 35,000 people, about fifty kilometers north of Portland.

The same account was broadcast a little earlier by the American television network NBC News, citing its sources in the law enforcement agencies.

US President Joe Biden spoke by phone with Maine Gov. Janet Mills and members of Congress from the state, offering the full support of federal authorities to local law enforcement agencies after the massacre, which he described as horrific, according to his services in the White House.

The alleged shooter, a white man armed with a semi-automatic rifle, remains at large and police have launched a “manhunt” for him, according to the Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Office, which released photos on Facebook of him with maroon hoodie, dark blue cargo pants and with a scoped rifle in hand, ready to fire.

They later said they believed the suspect to be Robert Card, 40, without releasing further details or estimating his motive.

The attacks took place in at least three different locations: a bowling alley and party, a restaurant-bar, and a supermarket chain’s distribution center.

Authorities, who advised residents to stay indoors, also released a photo of the white SUV, asking the public not to make contact with its owner and to contact them if they see it.

Public schools will not operate today, an official of the district’s school administration announced.

Yesterday’s is the deadliest attack of its kind in the US since August 2019, when a young man armed with an AK-47 opened fire on mostly Mexican and Latin American supermarket customers in El Paso, committing what authorities say was a racially motivated hate crime.

The deadliest gun attack in American history took place in Las Vegas in 2017, when a man in possession of several automatic rifles opened fire from a high-floor room at a Las Vegas hotel. Toll: 58 dead.

The US is paying an extremely heavy price for the widespread proliferation of weapons on its soil and the ease with which Americans can gain access to them.

The country has more guns (some 400 million) than residents, with one in three adults owning at least one gun and nearly one in two living in a household with at least one gun.

A consequence of their proliferation is the extremely high rate of deaths due to violent incidents with the use of weapons in the US, which bears no comparison with those in other economically developed countries.

Not even counting suicides, more than 15,000 people have been killed by bullets in the country this year, according to the numbers of the specialist website Gun Violence Archive.

It is the so-called mass shootings – armed attacks with at least four victims, in the terminology of American law enforcement agencies – that shock the most and are etched in the memory of Americans, while, every time, they highlight the huge ideological gap between Republicans and Democrats. when the question arises how such tragedies should be prevented.

Recent American history is full of massacres of this nature, which leave absolutely no area of ​​everyday life unscathed: not workplaces, not churches, not supermarkets, not nightclubs, not public streets, not public transportation. , nor the schools.

Despite many mass mobilizations, including a million-plus protesters, over the years, the US Congress has never passed an ambitious gun bill, as many of its members are influenced by the powerful NRA gun lobby, the largest of its kind in America.

In this country, where gun ownership is considered by millions of citizens to be a fundamental and inalienable constitutional right, the only recent legislative advances have been quite marginal, notably expanding criminal and psychiatric background checks on would-be gun buyers.