A black-clad gunman killed two children and wounded 17 other people at a Minneapolis Catholic school on Wednesday when he opened fire on students attending Mass on the third day of school, authorities said.

The assailant, a man in his early 20s, fired through the school's chapel windows at students sitting in pews and then took his own life, officials said. The children killed were 8 years old and 10 years old, they said.

"This was a deliberate act of violence against innocent children and other people worshiping. The sheer cruelty and cowardice of firing into a church full of children is absolutely incomprehensible," Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O'Hara told reporters.

The shooting at Annunciation Catholic School, a private elementary school with about 395 students, was the 146th such

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