'Monster' Hurricane Dorian pummels Bahamas, forecast to threaten Florida

TITUSVILLE, Florida - Hurricane Dorian, the second-strongest Atlantic storm on record, pounded the Bahamian islands of Great Abaco and Grand Bahama on Sunday night and was forecast to move dangerously close to Florida in the next two days, U.S. forecasters said.

Hazards for the Abaco Islands included storm surges 18 to 23 feet (5.5 to 7 metres) above normal tide levels, with higher destructive waves, the Miami-based U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.

At 11 p.m. (0300) GMT, the hurricane was about 135 miles (220 km) from the Florida coast, parts of which were being evacuated, as it crawled westward. Farther north, South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster ordered mandatory evacuations for parts of eight coastal counties effective at noon (1600 GMT) on Monday.

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp ordered evacuations in all or parts of six coastal counties also effective at noon on Monday.

Even a glancing blow from one of the strongest storms ever to menace Florida could bring torrential rains and damaging winds, the NHC said.

"On this track, the core of extremely dangerous Hurricane Dorian will continue to pound Great Abaco and Grand Bahama islands tonight and Monday," the NHC said. "The hurricane will move dangerously close to the Florida east coast late Monday through Tuesday night."

Dorian is forecast to remain a hurricane for the next five days, the NHC said. Dorian made landfall on Elbow Cay in the Abaco Islands with maximum sustained winds of 185 miles per hour (295 kph) and gusts of more than 220 mph (354 kph).

Dorian was the strongest hurricane on record to hit the northwestern Bahamas as a life-threatening Category 5 storm on the five-step Saffir-Simpson Wind Scale.

It was tied with Gilbert (1988), Wilma (2005) and the 1935 Labor Day hurricane for the second-strongest Atlantic hurricane on record, based on maximum sustained winds. Allen in 1980 was the most powerful, with 190 mph (306 kph) winds, the NHC said.

Julia Eaddy, 70, in Titusville, Florida, said she and her husband had ridden out several hurricanes before and were not fazed by the forecast. "I think it will be more of the same," she said.

Several gasoline stations around Titusville were closed. Many grocery stores were open but boarded up. Inside, shelves emptied out fast.

'MONSTER STORM'

Like many officials in Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis warned residents against becoming complacent after forecasts began saying on Saturday that the state might escape a direct hit.

"This storm at this magnitude could really cause massive destruction. Do not put your life in jeopardy by staying behind when you have a chance to get out," DeSantis said, urging people to heed evacuation orders from county officials.

Dozens of Floridians who live in boats in marinas in Brevard County were rushing to secure their vessels, strapping them to docks and removing canvas coverings from decks, but some boat residents said they wanted to ride out Dorian.

"I will not get off this boat during the hurricane for any reason at all, save a human life," said Ned Keahey, 56. "It's home."

Residents on Abaco posted video on social media showing floodwaters halfway up the sides of single-family homes with parts of the roofs torn off. Car alarms blared across the island, which was littered with twisted metal and splintered wood.

Forecasters predicted up to 30 inches (76 cm) of rain. The storm was moving at just 6 mph (9 kph) on Sunday night, prolonging a pummeling expected to last for hours, the NHC said.

Bahamian Prime Minister Hubert Minnis said in a nationally televised news conference that a "deadly storm and a monster storm" was battering the islands. Homes there are built to withstand winds of at least 150 mph (241 kph), but the expected storm surge was higher than the average roof.

"This will put us to a test that we've never confronted before," Minnis said. "This is probably the most sad and worst day of my life to address the Bahamian people."

Palm Beach County, the third most-populated county and home to President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort, was among those with partial mandatory evacuations. Other counties announced voluntary evacuations.

"This looks like it could be larger than all of them," Trump said during a briefing with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

FEMA is moving food, water and generators into the Southeastern United States, said acting Administrator Peter Gaynor.

Also on Sunday, a new tropical storm formed southwest of Mexico and was expected to become a hurricane on Monday, the NHC said. Tropical Storm Juliette was 455 miles (735 km) from Manzanillo, Mexico, with maximum sustained winds of 60 mph (95 kph), the NHC said.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

One winning ticket in huge $1.5 billion US lotto jackpot

WASHINGTON  - A single winning ticket has been identified in a massive $1.5 billion Mega Millions US lottery jackpot, the second largest on record, organizers said Wednesday.

The winning ticket was bought in South Carolina, but the lucky winner has not yet been identified.

Mega Millions, which initially announced a global record $1.6 billion jackpot, later revised the figure down to $1.537 billion.

The new amount makes the prize the second largest, just shy of the $1.586 billion jackpot for a rival Powerball lottery in January 2016, which was shared between three winning tickets.

Regardless, it's the largest single winning ticket ever and it dwarfed the previous Mega Millions record, set in March 2012 at $656 million.

The six winning numbers drawn on Tuesday night were five, 28, 62, 65, 70 and another five as the special "gold Mega Ball."

The massive jackpot had set off a lottery frenzy across America, with people lining up at convenience stores, supermarkets and liquor stores to buy a $2 ticket that gave them a roughly one in 300 million chance of winning.

"The moment we've been waiting for finally arrived, and we couldn't be more excited," said Gordon Medenica, lead director of the Mega Millions Group and director of Maryland Lottery and Gaming.

"This is truly a historic occasion."

The winner can take $878 million in a lump sum cash payment or be paid out in annuities over 30 years.

The jackpot ballooned because no one had won since July, when a group of office workers in California shared a $543 million prize.

The record 2016 Powerball jackpot was split three ways by ticket holders in California, Florida and Tennessee. Each took home $528.8 million.

In the latest Mega Millions draw, there were 36 second prizes worth $1 million each. They will be paid out to ticket holders who got the first five numbers right but not the Mega Ball.

Including the jackpot and lesser prizes, there were 15.75 million tickets Tuesday night that earned bettors at least the face value of the ticket.

Unlike in many other countries, US lottery winnings are taxable at the federal level, while some states also impose local taxes.

The jackpot now resets at $40 million for the next drawing on Friday. 

source: news.abs-cbn.com

'You better pray:' More flooding in Carolinas a week after Florence

RALEIGH - Residents of Georgetown County, South Carolina, where five rivers flow into the ocean, were preparing on Friday for a deluge of water in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence, which has killed at least 40 people.

The county of 60,000 people, on the Atlantic coast between Myrtle Beach and Charleston, is one of several areas in the Carolinas waiting anxiously as rivers start to crest, a week after Florence dumped some 3 feet of rain on the region.

Flooding could begin early next week, officials said during a community meeting on Thursday, as water continues to drain into rivers and reservoirs across North and South Carolina.

The city of Georgetown on Friday was handing out 15,000 sandbags as the county developed plans to evacuate residents. 

"Please heed the warnings," Sheriff Lane Cribb said. "Protecting lives and property will be our goal... You better pray."

Thirty-one deaths have been attributed to the storm in North Carolina, 8 in South Carolina and 1 in Virginia.

More than 3 dozen flood gauges in North and South Carolina showed flooding, according to the National Weather Service.

In Bladen County, North Carolina, around 100 people and 33 animals were rescued "in a dangerous operation in the middle of the night" after a dam burst, Governor Roy Cooper said in a Twitter post on Friday. Blackhawk helicopters were used to pluck many of them to safety.

Some 4,700 people across North Carolina have been rescued by boat or helicopter since the storm made landfall, twice as many as in Hurricane Matthew two years ago, according to state officials. About 10,000 remained in shelters.

The coastal city of Wilmington, North Carolina, remained mostly cut off by floodwaters on Friday,

Some 650 roads remained closed, the state's department of transportation said, warning motorists not to travel in 17 southeastern counties worst-hit by Florence.

More than 54,000 homes and businesses were without power in the Carolinas on Friday afternoon.

One week after Florence made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane, North Carolina was still feeling its effects, Cooper said. 

"Some locations won't see rivers crest until this weekend and flooding won't subside until next week," he said in another Twitter post.

As floodwaters continued to rise, concerns grew about environmental and health dangers.

Duke Energy Corp said on Friday that breaches in a cooling lake dam forced it to shut down its natural gas-fired L.V. Sutton plant in North Carolina. The utility said it could not rule out the possibility that coal ash from a dump adjacent to the plant, which formerly burned coal, might be flowing into the nearby Cape Fear River.

Coal ash can contaminate water and harm fish and wildlife.

The flooding from Florence has also caused 21 hog "lagoons," which store manure from pig farms, to overflow in North Carolina, possibly contaminating standing water, according to the state's Department of Environmental Quality. North Carolina is one of the leading hog-producing states in the country.

Several sewer systems in the region also have released untreated or partly treated sewage and storm water into waterways over the last week, local media reported.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Flood waters rise as Florence pummels Carolinas; at least 8 dead

WILSON, North Carolina -- Tropical Storm Florence dumped "epic" amounts of rain on North and South Carolina as it trudged inland on Saturday, knocking out power and causing at least 8 deaths as flood waters that have devastated many communities kept rising.

Florence's intensity has diminished since it roared ashore along the US mid-Atlantic coast on Friday as a hurricane. But its slow march over the two states, crawling west at only 2 miles per hour (3 km per hour), is expected to leave large parts of the region deluged in the coming days.

"This system is unloading epic amounts of rainfall, in some places measured in feet and not inches," North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper told a news briefing. His state has already endured record rainfall, with much more forecast to come. Rivers will continue to rise days after the rain has stopped, he said.

"This is a hurricane event followed by a flood event," said South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster.

With flood waters advancing rapidly in many communities, stranded people were being rescued by boat and by helicopter, while tens of thousands of others hunkered down in shelters. Numerous roads were closed, and authorities warned of the risk of landslides, tornadoes and flash floods, with dams and bridges in peril as rivers and creeks swelled.

Utility crews worked to restore electricity. As of Saturday afternoon, about 752,000 homes and businesses were without power in North Carolina, along with 119,000 in South Carolina.

Helicopter crews have carried out dozens of missions in coastal North Carolina and helped in the rescue of 50 people and eight pets, said Petty Officer Michael Himes of the U.S. Coast Guard.

RISING RIVERS

At 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT), the National Hurricane Center said Florence had maximum sustained winds near 45 miles per hour. It said it was located about 60 miles west of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and forecasters predicted a slow westward march.

The center said the storm would dump as much as 40 inches (102 cm) of rain along coastal areas of the Carolinas, as well as up to 10 inches in southwestern Virginia.

In Fayetteville, a North Carolina city of about 210,000 people about 90 miles inland, authorities told thousands of residents near the Cape Fear River and Little River to get out of their homes because of the flood risk.

"If you are refusing to leave during this mandatory evacuation, you need to do things like notify your legal next of kin because the loss of life is very, very possible," Mayor Mitch Colvin said at a news conference.

Officials said there had been at least 7 storm-related fatalities in the state.

Authorities in South Carolina reported one death, saying a woman was killed when her vehicle struck a fallen tree.

The storm made landfall on Friday near Wilmington, a city of about 120,000 squeezed between North Carolina's Atlantic coastline and the Cape Fear River. On Saturday, its streets were strewn with downed tree limbs and carpeted with leaves and other debris. Electricity remained out for much of the city, known for its historic mansions, with power lines lying across roads like wet strands of spaghetti.

"The fact that there haven't been more deaths and damage is amazing and a blessing," said Rebekah Roth, walking around Wilmington's Winoca Terrace neighborhood.

Florence has already set a North Carolina record for rainfall totals, exceeding that of Hurricane Floyd, which struck in 1999 and caused 56 deaths. Floyd produced 24 inches of rain in some parts of the state, while Florence has already dumped about 30 inches in areas around Swansboro.

In New Bern, about 90 miles northeast of Wilmington at the confluence of two rivers, Florence overwhelmed the town of 30,000 and left the downtown area under water. Some area residents described a harrowing retreat as the storm hit.

"It was pitch black and I was just scared out of my mind," said Tracy Singleton, who with her family later drove through torrential rain and high winds from her home near New Bern.

More than 20,000 people were in 157 shelters in North Carolina, with nearly 6,000 in South Carolina shelters, officials said.

South Carolina authorities said law enforcement officers were guarding against looting in evacuated areas, while Wilmington set a curfew on Saturday evening in response to looting in one area.

Schoolteacher Leslie Ochoa said she and her family loaded up 10 adults, 5 children, 14 goats, 10 dogs, two cats and one guinea pig and evacuated from Jacksonville, North Carolina to Columbia, South Carolina last Tuesday. As her son fed the goats in a hotel parking lot, she said she might not be able to return home until the middle of next week.

"Our friend behind our old house, they have gators swimming in the water. So yeah, not safe," Ochoa said.

The White House said President Donald Trump approved making federal funding available in some affected counties. Trump plans a visit to the region next week.

As the United States dealt with Florence, a strong typhoon tore across the northern tip of the Philippines, killing at least 3 people, wrecking homes and triggering landslides before heading toward Hong Kong and southern China.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

'Monster' Hurricane Florence to pummel US Southeast for days

WILMINGTON - Hurricane Florence, on track to become the first Category 4 storm to make a direct hit on North Carolina in 6 decades, howled closer to shore on Tuesday, threatening to unleash deadly pounding surf, days of torrential rain and severe flooding.

Fierce winds and massive waves are expected to lash the coasts of North and South Carolina and Virginia even before Florence makes landfall on Friday, and its rains will take a heavy toll for miles inland, the National Hurricane Center in Miami warned.

Although Florence was still days from arrival, authorities took extraordinary measures to move people out of harm's way. More than 1 million residents have been ordered to evacuate from coastal areas of the 3 states, closing university campuses, schools and factories.

Packing maximum sustained winds of 140 miles per hour (225 km per hour), the storm ranked as a Category 4 on the 5-step Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale and was expected to grow stronger and larger over the next few days, the NHC said.

"This storm is a monster," North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper said. "Even if you've ridden out storms before, this one is different. Don't bet your life on riding out a monster."

He cited forecasts showing Florence was likely to stall over North Carolina, "bringing days and days of rain."

To hasten evacuations from coastal South Carolina, officials reversed the flow of traffic on some highways so all major roads led away from shore. Miles of traffic slowed to a crawl along the main highway along North Carolina's Outer Banks barrier islands.

Maps of Florence's trajectory showed the center of the storm most likely to strike the southern coast of North Carolina. The last Category 4 hurricane to plow directly into North Carolina was Hazel in 1954, a devastating storm that killed 19 people and destroyed some 15,000 homes.

But NHC spokesman Dennis Feltgen stressed the effects of Florence would be widely felt. Tropical storm-force winds would extend nearly 300 miles across 3 states. A hurricane warning was posted for most of the Carolina coast north to the Virginia border.

In addition to flooding the coast with wind-driven storm surges of seawater as high as 13 feet (4 m), Florence could dump 15 to 25 inches (38 to 64 cm) of rain, with up to 35 inches (89 cm) in some spots, forecasters said.

LONG-TERM POWER OUTAGES POSSIBLE

Communities in Florence's path could be without electricity for weeks due to downed power lines and flooded equipment, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Administrator Brock Long said.

Utility companies deployed crews and gear in advance, according to trade group, the Edison Electric Institute. Workers from at least 15 states were en route to the region to assist with what could be a lengthy power restoration effort.

Crews also prepared 16 nuclear reactors in the three-state region for the storm. One power station, Duke Energy Corp's Brunswick plant, the closest to the area where landfall is forecast, faced a likely shutdown as a precaution. Shutdowns also were possible at two more plants in the path of predicted hurricane-force winds.

The American Red Cross said more than 700 workers were headed to the target area while shelters were set up to take in those who could not evacuate. A hospital in Hampton, Virginia, was transferring patients to safer places.

US President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed declarations of emergency for North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia, freeing up federal resources for storm response.

"We are sparing no expense. We are totally prepared," Trump said at the White House.

Trump faced severe criticism for his administration's response to Hurricane Maria last year in Puerto Rico. Some 3,000 people died in the aftermath of that storm.

COMMERCIAL OPERATIONS

Days before its arrival, Florence was already disrupting commercial operations.

Boeing Co suspended work on Tuesday at the South Carolina plant where it assembles 787 widebody jetliners, and a Volvo automobile plant in South Carolina's evacuation zone was also closed, company officials said.

Smithfield Foods Inc said it would shut down the world's largest hog-slaughtering facility in Tar Heel, North Carolina, on Thursday and Friday due to the hurricane.

Residents prepared by boarding up their homes and stocking up on food, water and other essentials, stripping many grocery store shelves of merchandise. Some gasoline stations also ran low on fuel.

Not everyone was in a hurry to leave. Charles Mullen, 81, a longtime resident of Hatteras Island, North Carolina, said he had ridden out many storms and that most locals were planning to stay unless Florence took aim at Hatteras.

"If it decides to come here, we're gone," he said. 

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Obama declares state of emergency in Georgia

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama declared a state of emergency in Georgia on Thursday, adding it to the states of Florida and South Carolina as being eligible for federal hurricane relief.

He ordered federal aid to supplement state and local efforts, authorizing the Homeland Security Department and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate disaster relief as Hurricane Matthew bore down on the US coast.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Teen kills father, opens fire on schoolyard in South Carolina

CHARLESTON, S.C. -- A 14-year-old South Carolina boy shot and killed his father then drove to an elementary school where he opened fire with a handgun, wounding two children and a teacher before being tackled by a firefighter who held him for police, authorities said on Wednesday.

The suspect, whose name has not been released, shot dead his 47-year-old father, Jeffrey DeWitt Osborne, then drove a pickup truck about 2 miles (3.2 km) to Townville Elementary school where he crashed into a fence surrounding the playground, authorities said.

After the teenager began shooting, volunteer firefighter Jamie Brock pinned him down while staff led children to safety inside the building. Police arrived within 7 minutes of a teacher calling 911 to take the suspect into custody at the school in Anderson County, located near the Georgia state line about 100 miles (160 km) northeast of Atlanta. The shooter never entered the building.

U.S. schools have taken added security precautions since 2012 when a gunman shot dead 20 children and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

Brock, a 30-year veteran of the Townville Volunteer Fire Department, was hailed on social media as a hero and credited with preventing another school massacre.

"(He) was there in the hot scene and risked his life to mitigate this incident," Anderson County emergency services director Taylor Jones said. "He just used enough force to take him to the ground."

The shooting left a 6-year-old boy in critical condition and undergoing surgery, Scott Stoller, Anderson County's director of emergency services, told the Anderson Independent Mail.

The other boy and a female teacher were in good condition, said Juana Slade, spokeswoman for AnMed Health Medical Center. Both boys were 6 years old, the Independent Mail reported.

One male student was shot in the leg and the other boy was shot in the foot. The female teacher was shot in the shoulder, authorities said. The shooter and victims were white.

Anderson County Sheriff’s Office Captain Garland Major did not know the relationship between the shooter and those injured at the school. The suspect was home schooled, authorities said.

Immediately after the shooting, armed officers guarded students as they were evacuated from the school and taken by bus to a nearby church, local media said. Television images showed police swarming the school, with some officers on the roof while others moved around the building.

Jamie Meredith, whose daughter is in kindergarten at Townville Elementary, told WYFF news that she panicked after getting word of the shooting. Her daughter is OK but described a scene of scared and crying children.

“I’m just scared,” Meredith said through tears as she was interviewed by WYFF. “I don’t even want her to go to school now.”

About 280 students attend the school.

The incident was the latest in a series of shootings at U.S. schools that have fueled the debate about access to guns in America.

Earlier this month, a 14-year-old girl shot and wounded a fellow student at a rural Texas high school and then died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley is due to meet with law enforcement officials in the area this evening, Jones said.

(Additional reporting by Colleen Jenkins in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Curtis Skinner in San Francisco and Laila Kearney in New York; Writing by Lisa Shumaker; Editing by Andrew Hay)

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Record-setting rains submerge parts of US Southeast

CHARLESTON, United States - Record rainfall left large areas of the US southeast under water Sunday as roads were closed and residents were warned to stay indoors.

The states of North and South Carolina have been particularly hard hit by heavy flooding, but the driving rain in recent days has spared almost none of the US East Coast.

The wild weather was blamed for at least four deaths in the Carolinas since Thursday.

The storms are part of a weather system separate from Hurricane Joaquin, which was downgraded to a Category Two storm as it headed toward Bermuda.

"We haven't seen this level of rain in the low country in 1,000 years," South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley said at a press briefing, urging people to stay inside to keep safe.

"This is not something to be out taking pictures of. This is not something that you want your kids playing in. The water is not safe.

"And a lot of areas across the state where you see this deep water, it's got bacteria in it. So stay inside and don't get in there," she stressed.

"This is an incident we've never had before."

President Barack Obama has issued an emergency declaration for the state, ordering federal aid for areas affected by flooding.

Historic Charleston submerged

Streets were submerged in the historic old town of Charleston, South Carolina, as non-stop rain battered the city, with flooding closing restaurants and bars.

"Right now, we are in life-saving mode," said Lieutenant Colonel Cindi King, a spokeswoman for the South Carolina National Guard.

"We are just focusing on helping our citizens."

The National Weather Service said the city had seen 14 inches (36 centimeters) of rain over the past three days, beating a previous record of 12 inches in 1973.

"It's the worst water I have seen in the 10 years I have lived here. Neighbors tell me it's the worst since Hurricane Hugo" in 1989, said 38-year-old Jamieson Clair, a resident of the city.

In hard-hit Columbia, the mayor ordered a curfew for the city from 6:00 pm to 6:00 am.

The Red Cross has opened 26 shelters across the state.

The University of South Carolina, based in Columbia, canceled all Monday classes.

More than 200 swift-water rescues have been reported since Saturday night, while the state's Department of Transportation said at least 211 state roads and 43 bridges were closed due to flooding.

The National Weather Service warned of "potentially historic and life-threatening flooding" across the southeastern United States.

Bermuda under threat

Forecasters said Joaquin now is closing in on tiny Bermuda, with a population of just 66,000, where the potential damage could rival what was seen in the Bahamas.

The storm still has winds of 100 miles (160 kilometers) per hour, and is dumping heavy rain.

In the Bahamas, a low-lying archipelago, residents surveyed the damage after Joaquin destroyed homes and left some without power or phone services.

The Bahamas is home to 385,000 people and visited by far more tourists every year -- about 1.3 million.

Search for cargo ship

Rescuers were still frantically searching for the El Faro cargo vessel, with which contact was lost early Thursday as the dangerous weather system approached the Bahamas.

Coast Guard troops turned up "a number of different objects in the water" via an aerial search but were unable to confirm whether they were from the vessel.

"We found a few life rings, life jackets and there's been a report of possible oil sheen," Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Ryan Doss told AFP.

"We have boats in the water... they will be able to get to some of that stuff soon" he said, adding that it was "the first day of good weather and the seas are down one or two feet (one-third to one meter)."

Tim Nolan, president of the company that owns the El Faro, said it had sent its only other ship plus a tugboat in search of the missing vessel and had recovered "a container, which appears to be from the El Faro, and observed what appears to be an oil sheen."

En route from Florida to Puerto Rico, the 735-foot cargo ship was reported to be caught in the storm near Crooked Island, part of the Bahamas island chain.

It was from there that it sent a satellite notification stating the ship had lost propulsion and had a 15-degree list.

Twenty-eight Americans and five Poles were on board.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Gunman kills 9 at black South Carolina church

CHARLESTON, S.C. - A white gunman was still at large after killing nine people during a prayer service at a historic African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina, the city's police chief said on Thursday, describing the attack as a hate crime.

Officers with dogs searched the streets for the suspect, whom police described as a 21-year-old white man with sandy hair wearing a sweatshirt, jeans and boots.

Gunfire erupted inside Emanuel AME Church in downtown Charleston on Wednesday night, Police Chief Gregory Mullen said.

The gunman had yet to be caught hours after the attack and was considered extremely dangerous, he said.

"To have an awful person come in and shoot them is inexplicable, obviously the most intolerable and unbelievable act possible," Charleston Mayor Joe Riley told reporters. "The only reason someone could walk into a church to shoot people praying is out of hate."

The shooting called to mind a 1963 bombing of an African-American church in Birmingham, Alabama, that killed four girls and galvanized the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

The Charleston church is one of the largest and oldest black congregations in the South, its website says. It has its roots in the early 19th century, and the current building, completed in 1891, is considered a historically significant building, according to the U.S. National Park Service.

The attack follows the April shooting of an unarmed black man in North Charleston by a white police officer. The officer has been charged with murder in that case, one of a number of deaths of unarmed black men in encounters with police that have raised racial tensions in the United States.

Soon after the shooting, a clutch of men stood in a circle in front of a hotel near the church, one of many landmark buildings in the city.

"We pray for the families, they've got a long road ahead of them," Reverend James Johnson, a local civil rights activist, said during the impromptu prayer service.

The FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and other agencies have joined in the investigation, Mullen said.

Eight victims were found dead in the church, Mullen told reporters, and a ninth person died after being taken to hospital. One other person was wounded and was being treated at a local hospital, Mullen said.

None of the victims were immediately identified. But the Reverend Al Sharpton, the New York-based civil rights leader, said in a tweet that the Reverend Clementa Pinckney, the church's pastor and a member of the state Senate, was among the dead.

After the shooting, a bomb threat was reported near the church, Charleston County Sheriff's Office spokesman Eric Watson said, and people who were gathered in the area were told by police to move back.

Mullen said that the all-clear had been given after checks following the bomb threat.

A police chaplain was present at the scene of the shooting, and a helicopter with a searchlight hovered overhead as officers combed the area.

Following the attack on the church, Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida, canceled an appearance in Charleston that had been scheduled for Thursday morning.

"Governor Bush's thoughts and prayers are with the individuals and families affected by this tragedy," his campaign team said in a statement.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com