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US Army base gunman 'conscious' | US Army base gunman 'conscious' |
(30 minutes later) | |
A US Army major suspected of shooting dead 13 people at military base has regained consciousness and is able to talk, officials have told the BBC. | |
Major Nidal Malik Hasan, a 39-year-old army psychiatrist, injured another 29 people at the Fort Hood base in Texas. | Major Nidal Malik Hasan, a 39-year-old army psychiatrist, injured another 29 people at the Fort Hood base in Texas. |
He was shot by police and had been in a coma in hospital following the attack. | |
Maj Hasan's motives for the shooting are unknown, but some reports said the US-born Muslim had been unhappy about being deployed to Afghanistan. | |
Maria Gallegos, a spokeswoman for the Brooke Army Medical Center, said Maj Hasan was in a critical but stable condition. | Maria Gallegos, a spokeswoman for the Brooke Army Medical Center, said Maj Hasan was in a critical but stable condition. |
However, she would not say what Maj Hasan had been talking to medical staff about, nor what treatment he was receiving. | |
A spokesman at the hospital, Dewey Mitchell, told the Associated Press news agency Maj Hasan had been able to speak since Saturday, when he was taken off a ventilator. | |
'Nightmare' | |
Witnesses to Thursday's attack said Maj Hasan opened fire on fellow soldiers at a processing centre for troops about to be deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. | |
Senior US Senator Joe Lieberman has said he plans to open a congressional investigation into whether the shootings were a terrorist attack. | |
Mr Lieberman also said he hoped to determine whether the army missed signs that Maj Hasan may have harboured extreme views. | |
Maj Hasan was born in the US of Palestinian parents and has been described as a devout Muslim. | |
His cousin told US media last week that his imminent deployment was his "worst nightmare", and that he had been battling racial harassment because of his "Middle Eastern ethnicity". | |
Fort Hood, near the town of Killeen, is the largest US base in the world and houses some 40,000 US troops. | |
Soldiers at Fort Hood are among those deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and some will have returned from there. The base has a centre that deals with combat stress. |