Four dead, 18 injured in Alabama shooting

At least four people have been killed and 18 injured in a mass shooting in Birmingham, Alabama, police say.

“Multiple shooters fired multiple shots at a group of people” Saturday night in the city’s Five Points South neighborhood, Birmingham police Officer Truman Fitzgerald said.

Officers found the bodies of two men and a woman at the scene, while a third man later died of gunshot wounds at hospital, Birmingham police said.

The perpetrators are believed to have driven to the scene in a vehicle before getting out and opening fire. No suspects have been arrested.

He added that they believed the shooting was “not random and was the result of an isolated incident where multiple victims were caught in the crossfire.”

The intended target was among those killed, Police Chief Scott Thurmond said at a news conference Sunday.

The other victims, all of whom were outside, were reportedly caught in the gunfire.

Mr Fitzgerald said four of the injured suffered life-threatening injuries.

Authorities are also pushing to find the shooters.

Police said in a statement that they were working with the FBI and other federal agencies, offering a $5,000 reward for information and had opened a web portal to submit photos and videos of the incident.

The Five Points South neighborhood is known for its nightlife. The shooting happened on Magnolia Avenue, Fitzgerald said.

Witnesses waiting in line outside a hookah and cigar lounge on Magnolia Avenue at the time told local news site Al.com that some of the gunfire appeared to come from a weapon converted to a fully automatic weapon.

Earlier on Sunday, Mr Fitzgerald told reporters there were “dozens of gunshot victims” following the incident.

Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin blamed the violence on “Glock switches” — devices that can be attached to handguns to make them fire automatically — and said on social media Sunday that they “are the number one public safety issue in our city and state.”

“Converting a semi-automatic weapon into a fully automatic weapon that discharges all the bullets in seconds has no place on our streets,” he wrote, adding that the city does not have the authority to ban Glock switches, only the state.

According to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people are injured or killed, there have been more than 400 mass shootings in the United States so far this year.