According to officials, twenty-one people, including 18 children, were killed in a shooting at an elementary school in the United States.

The gunman, a local man of 18 years of age, has been killed.

Texas State Senator Roland Gutierrez, who represents Uvalde, Texas, where the elementary school shooting occurred, informed CNN that fatalities have increased since Texas Governor Greg Abbott initially told the media that 15 people had been killed.

It was the bloodiest attack on an elementary school in the United States since a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, nearly a decade ago. And it occurred just ten days after a body-armored shooter killed ten black consumers and employees at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, in a racial attack, according to investigators.

Federal law enforcement officers predicted that the death toll would grow. They talked anonymously because they were not authorized to disclose investigative information.

Abbott stated that the shooter entered Robb Elementary School in Uvalde on Tuesday (Wednesday NZT) with a handgun and maybe a rifle and opened fire. The governor named the assailant Salvador Ramos and stated that he was a resident of the predominantly Latino hamlet located approximately 135 kilometers west of San Antonio.

The shooter was probably killed by responding authorities, although the circumstances are still under investigation.

There are reports that a Border Patrol agent who was nearby when the shooting began rushed into the school without waiting for backup and shot and killed the gunman, who was hiding behind a barricade, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the incident.

According to a law enforcement source, the agent was injured but able to walk away from the school.

Before entering the school and firing fire, Abbott stated that Ramos shot his grandmother, whose condition is unknown.

Photos depict a damaged pickup truck outside the school that, according to Abbott, Ramos abandoned before entering the building.

Pete Arredondo, head of policy for the school district, stated that the attacker acted alone.

It was initially unclear how many individuals were injured. However, Arredondo stated that there were "several injuries" Earlier, Uvalde Memorial Hospital reported thirteen children were brought there. According to another hospital, a 66-year-old woman is in critical condition.

Robb Elementary School has just around 600 kids enrolled. Arredondo did not reveal the ages of the shot youngsters. This was the final week of school before the summer break. Earlier, the district announced that all of its schools were under lockdown due to gunfire in the neighborhood.

The White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre stated that President Joe Biden was briefed on the shooting while returning from a five-day trip to Asia on Air Force One. Biden was slated to deliver remarks at the White House on Tuesday evening.

Uvalde is home to approximately 16,000 inhabitants and is the county seat of Uvalde County. The village is around 120 kilometers from the Mexican border, and Robb Elementary is located in a predominantly residential area with modest dwellings.

The tragedy at Uvalde was the deadliest school shooting in the history of Texas, and it added to a tragic total of mass shootings in Texas that have been among the deadliest in the United States over the past five years.

In 2018, a gunman killed ten individuals at Santa Fe High School in the Houston metropolitan region. A year earlier, a gunman slaughtered more than two dozen people during a Sunday service at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. In 2019, another gunman killed 23 people in a racist attack at a Walmart in El Paso.

The shooting occurred days before the annual meeting of the National Rifle Association was scheduled to begin in Houston. Abbott and Texas' US senators were among the Republican political officials slated to appear at a leadership conference hosted by the NRA's lobbying arm on Friday.

Since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, the gun control discussion in Congress has fluctuated. Republicans and the power of outside groups such as the National Rifle Association (NRA) have continually stymied legislative efforts to alter US gun laws significantly.

A year after Sandy Hook, West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin and Pennsylvania Republican Patrick J. Toomey devised a deal to enhance the nation's background check system. As the bill was about to be taken to the Senate floor for a vote, it became evident that it lacked the 60 votes necessary to overcome a filibuster.

Then-President Barack Obama, who had made gun control a top priority of his administration in the Newtown shooting, termed Congress' inaction "a pretty shameful day for Washington."

In 2017, the House of Representatives passed two pieces of legislation to extend background checks on weapons purchases. One bill would have eliminated an exemption for online and private transactions, and the alternative would have prolonged the review period for background checks. Both accounts stagnated in the 50-50 Senate, where the Democrats require at least 10 Republican votes to overcome a filibuster.