One person was killed and at least seven others wounded in a school shooting in the US state of Colorado, with two suspects taken into custody.
The shooting occurred across town from one of the worst gun massacres in the country's modern history.
Several of the surviving victims of the attack at the science and technology School in Highlands Ranch, a Denver suburb, were listed in critical condition at local hospitals and in surgery, Douglas County Sheriff Tony Spurlock said.
One victim, an 18-year-old male, later died of his injuries, Mr Spurlock said a short time later.
“Two individuals walked into the STEM school, got deep inside the school, and engaged students in two separate locations,” he said.
The suspects were identified only as two male students of the school, one an adult and the other under age 18, the sheriff said. The school serves students from kindergarten through 12th grade.
The sheriff's office said the attackers opened fire at the STEM School Highlands Ranch, a kindergarten through 12th-grade school in central Colorado, around eight kilometers by road from Columbine High School.
Law enforcement officials declined to comment on a possible motive for the rampage, saying it was too early in the course of the investigation, which was being assisted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
A man who called into local KOA radio told the station that two people burst into his son's classroom and opened fire, wounding two students.
The father said the victims were alive and that students were able to disarm the shooters.
A student who was not identified told Denver station KUSA-TV outside the school that the violence had left him "a bit shaky" and "scared", but "glad that I didn't get hurt".
The White House said President Donald Trump had been briefed on the shooting.
The gun violence in Colorado came one week to the day after a 22-year-old gunman opened fire on the Charlotte campus of the University of North Carolina, killing two people and wounding four others before the gunman was disarmed and arrested.
The Colorado school, which combines elementary, middle and high school on one campus has 1850 students enrolled, according to the district.
There was no immediate information about the ages or identities of the victims or the suspects.
Source: Supplied
Local television showed dozens of police and fire vehicles surrounding the school as deputies conducted a room-by-room search of the campus.
The Denver Post reported that all schools in the area were placed on lockdown while police and fire crews responded to the scene.
Some of the worst mass shootings in the United States have occurred in Colorado.
In 1999, two students killed 13 people at Columbine High School before committing suicide in what remains one of the deadliest school shootings in US history.
School shootings have since become a frequent occurrence in the US, where firearms killed nearly 40,000 people in 2017, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Despite the scale of the gun violence problem in the country, efforts to address it legislatively have long been largely deadlocked at the federal level.
