IT WAS 1.30 in the afternoon in central Texas when a short, bald man with a round face and bushy eyebrows dressed in army fatigues walked into the waiting room.
US military personnel at the Soldier Readiness Processing Centre at Fort Hood had appointments to see doctors and dentists before leaving for Iraq and Afghanistan.
The intruder stepped behind a desk, pulled out two handguns, one a semi-automatic pistol, and opened fire, cutting down his victims in small clusters. Most of the victims were unarmed, but military and civilian police arrived on the scene in minutes.
In the most dramatic moments of the 10-minute massacre on Thursday, policewoman Kimberly Munley exchanged fire with the gunman, an army psychiatrist named Maj Nidal Malik Hasan. Both were wounded. Both survived.
By the time the worst shooting incident on a US military base was over, 13 people lay dead and another 30 wounded. Army personnel tore their uniforms to make tourniquets. Ambulances ferried the victims to three hospitals, where would-be blood donors were so numerous they had to be turned away. Sirens intended for tornado alarms blared across the 339 sq mile fort, the largest US military base in the world.
Loudspeakers told tens of thousands of troops and family members living at Fort Hood to lock themselves indoors and turn off air conditioning. Mobile phones jammed and relatives of those inside the base waited anxiously for six hours at the gates, while the army combed every building.
A soldier in Iraq learned of the massacre in an e-mail from his wife. “This is ridiculous,” he wrote. “I’m in the war zone, not you!”
Lt Gen Robert Cone, commanding officer of the base, told NBC that witnesses heard Hasan shout “Allahu Akbar” as he opened fire. Information in the case is subject to caution. In the aftermath of the shooting, Lt Gen Cone said Hasan was dead and had worked with accomplices. Eight hours later, he confirmed Hasan was alive and had acted alone.
In Washington, President Barack Obama cut short his appearance at a conference of Native Americans. The audience gasped when he told them of the “horrific outburst of violence” at the army base in Texas.
“It’s difficult enough when we lose these brave Americans in battles overseas,” the president said. “It is horrifying that they should come under fire at an army base on American soil.”
Hasan, the wounded gunman, was flown out on a helicopter and is under guard in hospital, pending interrogation. The entire country wants to know what motivated him to commit the atrocity. In particular, US intelligence wants to know if he was in contact with Muslim extremists.
This much is clear: Hasan was born in Arlington, Virginia, in 1970. His Palestinian parents had immigrated to the US from a village near Jerusalem. He joined the US army after high school, against the wishes of his parents.
The army paid for his medical and psychiatric studies. In July, Hasan was transferred from Walter Reed Army Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, where he had worked since 2003, to Fort Hood. Though he joined the military in 1995, Hasan had never served abroad and was upset that he was about to be sent overseas.
A picture of a hard-working, lonely and devoutly religious Muslim who opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan emerges from interviews given to US television and newspapers by Hasan’s aunt Noel Hamad, his cousin Nader Hasan, Faizul Khan, the former imam of the mosque where he prayed in Silver Spring, Maryland, and Col Terry Lee, who worked with him at Fort Hood.
Noel Hamad told the Washington Post that Hasan was “like my son” since his parents died a decade ago, spending free time and holidays at her home. She said Hasan’s brother Eyad, a businessman, fainted when he learned of the killings.
Another brother, Anas, is a lawyer in Jerusalem.
According to Mr Hamad, Hasan was taunted by fellow soldiers in the aftermath of the attacks on September 11th, 2001. “Some people can take it and some cannot,” the gunman’s aunt said. “He had listened to all of that and he wanted out of the military and they would not let him leave, even after he offered to repay” the costs of medical school and his doctorate in psychiatry.
Hasan rarely talked about his work, but he told his aunt that the soldiers he treated for post-traumatic stress disorder had seen terrible things and that he too was affected. She recalled him speaking of one patient whose face was so badly burned it was almost melted.
Faizul Khan said Hasan prayed at least once a day, often in uniform, at the Muslim Community Centre in Silver Spring, Maryland, near Walter Reed.
“He came to mosque . . . to see if there were any suitable girls to marry,” Mr Khan told the Washington Post. “I don’t think he ever had a match, because he had too many conditions. He wanted a girl who was very religious, prays five times a day.”
At Walter Reed, Hasan refused to have his picture taken with female colleagues in group photos.
Col Terry Lee, who worked with Hasan at Fort Hood, told Fox News that Hasan said maybe Muslims should stand up and fight against the aggressor. “Other times he would make comments we shouldn’t be in the war in the first place.” Col Lee said Hasan hoped President Obama would pull US troops out of both Muslim countries and became agitated when it didn’t happen.
Investigators obtained federal warrants to search Hasan’s computer, mobile phones and apartment. They are attempting to determine whether he is the man who posted musings praising suicide bombers on the internet.
“If one suicide bomber can kill 100 enemy soldiers because they were caught off guard, that would be considered a strategic victory,” a man calling himself Nidal Hasan wrote in a blog.
The blogger compared suicide bombers who act to protect Muslims to a soldier throwing himself on a grenade to protect comrades.
US authorities seemed eager not to create a backlash against Muslims, but the right-wing television station Fox News asked whether the military had been “politically correct” in not taking a closer look at Hasan. It suggested there should perhaps be special screening for Muslim servicemen.
Muslim groups were quick to condemn the atrocity.
“No political or religious ideology could ever excuse such wanton and indiscriminate violence,” said a statement by the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “The attack was particularly heinous in that it targeted the all-volunteer army that protects our nation.”
The massacre adds another sad record to Ford Hood’s history: 518 service members from the base have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Seventy-five soldiers from Fort Hood have committed suicide since 2003, 10 this year.
Yesterday a gunman opened fire inside a high-rise office building in Orlando, Florida, killing one person and wounding five others. The suspect, who fled the Gateway Centre building in downtown Orlando after the incident, was later apprehended at his mother’s home, said Orlando mayor Buddy Dyer and police chief Val Demmings.
Police named the suspect as Jason Rodriguez (40), who had worked for 11 months as an engineer at the Orlando office of the Reynolds, Smith Hill consulting company before being laid off for “deficient” performance, a company spokesman said.
CNN showed footage of Rodriguez being led away in handcuffs and said he replied: “They left me to rot,” when asked by reporters why he had opened fire.