13 Dead in Fort Hood Rampage

13 Dead in Fort Hood Rampage

 

FORT HOOD, Texas -- A U.S. Army major allegedly opened fire Thursday on fellow troops in the heart of the giant army base here, killing 13 people and wounding at least 30 in one of the worst incidents of soldier-on-soldier violence in U.S. military history.

The shooting rampage, allegedly carried out by Maj. Malik Nadal Hasan, was halted by a female civilian police officer who shot him, said Lt. Gen. Robert Cone, the top military commander on the base. The woman is expected to recover from wounds sustained in the gun battle, he said.

Maj. Hasan, 39 years old, also was hospitalized after the shooting, Lt. Gen. Cone said, and "his death is not imminent." He was on a ventilator and unconscious in a hospital after being shot four times during the shootings at the Army's sprawling Fort Hood, post officials said.

In the early chaos after the shootings, authorities believed they had killed him, only to discover later that he had survived.

 

The alleged shooter is a psychiatrist, originally from Virginia, who had been recently promoted to major and transferred to Fort Hood from the Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington. His professional specialties include post-traumatic stress disorder, combat stress and other emotional issues common to the troops implicated in earlier incidents of military fratricide.

Maj. Hasan was slated to serve for the first time in Iraq in coming weeks, military officials said. An official at the Pentagon added there were indications that Maj. Hasan was deeply upset about the pending assignment.

Maj. Hasan's cousin, Nader Hasan, told Fox News that his cousin was deeply traumatized about seeing wartime service.

AFP/Getty Images

Major Malik Nidal Hasan

 

"We've known for the last five years that that was probably his worst nightmare," Nader Hasan said. "He would tell us how he hears horrific things...that was probably affecting him psychologically."

The cousin said Maj. Hasan had joined the military out of high school against the wishes of his parents. He added that Maj. Hasan, a Muslim, hired a military lawyer and had been trying since September to avoid deployment to Iraq and leave the Army.

The shooting began about 1:30 p.m. local time in two small buildings, adjacent to a processing center where soldiers receive medical checkups as they prepare to deploy overseas, officials said.

Lt. Gen. Cone said the victims, mostly soldiers, were waiting for treatment. Soldiers at the base do not routinely carry weapons and, therefore, would have been unarmed at the time of the attack. Maj. Hasan used two handguns, he said, including a semiautomatic weapon.

The injuries of the wounded varied significantly, he said.

Quick action by base personnel protected about 600 people who were in a nearby theater to attend college graduation ceremonies for 138 soldiers, Lt. Gen. Cone said.

Thursday's attack was one of the Army's worst single-day losses of life since the start of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

President Barack Obama said in a nationally televised address that the attack on soldiers in the U.S. was particularly unsettling.

"It's difficult enough when we lose these brave Americans in battles overseas," he said. "It is horrifying that they should come under fire at an Army base on American soil."

Fort Hood, is the largest U.S. military facility in the world. It houses the 1st Cavalry Division and the First Army Division West, as well as an array of smaller aviation, logistics, and military police units.

More than 45,000 soldiers are assigned to the base, with many deployed to Afghanistan or Iraq at any one time. About 9,000 civilians also work at Fort Hood, and thousands of families live on the base and in nearby Killeen -- about 160 miles southwest of Dallas.

The shooting rattled service members at Fort Hood. "It's heavy on the hearts of soldiers," said Dionte Turner, a 29-year-old military police officer stationed who has been deployed to both Iraq and Afghanistan. Killings "can happen anywhere," he said, "but you don't expect it to happen in your backyard."

—The Associated Press contributed to this article.

Write to Yochi Dreazen at yochi.dreazen@wsj.com and Ana Campoy at ana.campoy@dowjones.com