US town shattered by school shooting that killed 26

NEWTOWN: The residents of an idyllic Connecticut town were reeling in horror Saturday from the massacre of 20 small children and six adults at a school, in one of the worst mass shootings in US history.

The heavily armed young gunman shot dead 18 children inside Sandy Hook Elementary School, said Connecticut State Police spokesman Lieutenant Paul Vance.

Two more died of their wounds in hospital, Vance said.

Six adults at the school were also killed, he added, before the gunman, clad in black body armor according to media reports, was shot -- either by his own hand or by police.

US media said the school principal was among those killed.

Authorities offered little clue as to the motive for the shootings in Newtown, a wooded and picturesque small town north-east of New York City.

Hours after the shooting, hundreds of people gathered for a vigil, the crowd filling the church to capacity and spilling outside its doors.

Some lit candles while others joined hands to sing Christmas songs.

"This is a kind of community, when things like that happen, they really pull together," the priest, Robert Weiss, said during the Mass.

David Connors, whose triplets were at the school during the shooting but were unharmed, said he was still horrified.

"It's hard. I've never imagined a thing like that could happen here."

"Evil visited this community today," State Governor Dan Malloy said earlier.

President Barack Obama, wiping away tears and struggling to maintain his composure, said he was aghast over the tragedy.

Vance said just one person suffered an injury and survived, indicating that the gunman was unusually accurate or methodical in his fire.

The majority of killings, which began at around 09:30 a.m., "took place in one section of the school, in two rooms," Vance added. The children were aged between five and ten, officials said.

US media reported that the killer was Adam Lanza, 20, and that police had earlier confused him with his brother, 24-year-old Ryan Lanza, whose identity card he had been carrying with him when he went into the school.

The surviving brother was in custody and being questioned, according to US television reports.

Many news outlets said the extra victim found in a home in Newtown -- the 28th body in the day's bloodshed was the shooter's mother, who was a teacher at Sandy Hook and whom he had killed before driving to the school.

Police said they expected to be able to make public the identities of the victims later on Saturday.