“Today as Americans we grieve the brutal murder, a horrific massacre of dozens of innocent people,” he said in a statement at the White House.

“Although it is still early in the investigation, we know enough to say that this was an act of terror and an act of hate,” Obama said.

“We will not give in to fear or turn against each other. Instead, we will stand united as Americans to protect our people and defend our nation, and to take action against those who threaten us.”

He ordered the flag at the White House to be flown at half staff to honour the victims.

The shooter, who was identified as Florida resident Omar S. Mateen was killed by police at the nightclub. A top U.S. congressman said Mateen may have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State militant group, but U.S. officials cautioned they had no direct evidence of a connection.

Fifty-three people were wounded in the rampage, which surpassed the 32 people killed in the 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech university.

Obama said it was appropriate for the FBI to investigate the massacre as an act of terrorism and said he would “spare no effort” to determine whether the assailant had been inspired or associated with an extremist group.

The president also termed the shooting a new reminder of “how easy it is for someone to get their hands on a weapon that lets them shoot people in a school or in a house of worship or a movie theatre or in a nightclub,” a reference to other mass killings that have punctuated recent U.S. history.

“We have to decide if that’s the kind of country we want to be,” he said.

(Reporting by Timothy Gardner, Sarah N. Lynch, Jason Lange, Ginger Gibson and David Morgan; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Chris Reese)

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In a statement, Lombardi said the Pope was shaken and saddened by the “homicidal folly and senseless hatred” of the attack.

“We all hope that ways may be found, as soon as possible, to effectively identify and contrast the causes of such terrible and absurd violence,” the statement said.

A gunman armed with an assault rifle carried out the attack on Sunday at a packed gay nightclub in what is the worst mass shooting in U.S. history.

(Reporting by Stephen Jewkes; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Afghan-born father of Omar Mateen, the man police identified as the gunman who killed 50 people at a packed gay nightclub in Florida on Sunday, is a fringe political commentator who rails against Pakistan and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.

Seddique Mateen, who public records indicate is the father of Omar Mateen, had an occasional television show on a U.S.-based Afghan satellite channel for about three years, and has continued to post political commentaries on his Facebook page as recently as Sunday.

Omar Khatab, the owner of the California-based satellite channel Payam-e-Afghan, said in an interview that Seddique Mateen occasionally bought time on his channel to broadcast a show called “Durand Jirga,” which focused in part on the disputed Durand Line, the frontier between Afghanistan and Pakistan demarcated by the Indian subcontinent’s former British rulers.

In an interview with NBC News on Sunday, Seddique Mateen, also known as Mir Siddique, said his son’s rampage had “nothing to do with religion.”

He described an incident in downtown Miami in which his son, U.S.-born Omar Mateen, 29, of Florida, saw two men kissing in front of his wife and child and became very angry.

“We are saying we are apologising for the whole incident,” NBC News quoted Seddique Mateen as saying. “We weren’t aware of any action he is taking. We are in shock like the whole country.”

Seddique Mateen lives in Florida, according to public records, but it was not immediately known when he came to the United States. He did not return messages left on his phone, which appeared to be turned off, or respond to an email.

Khatab said Seddique Mateen would show up at his studio in Canoga Park, California, “three or four times a year” to tape his shows.

“He’d talk for about two to three hours,” Khatab said in a phone interview. “He’d buy his own time and come here and broadcast and leave within a day.”

CRITICAL OF PAKISTAN’S ISI

Khatab said Seddique Mateen’s political views were largely anti-Pakistan. A YouTube channel under Mateen’s name had more than 100 videos posted between 2012 and 2015.

One of the videos refers to the “killer ISI” – the acronym for Pakistan’s main military-run intelligence service – and says the agency is the “creator and father of the world’s terrorism.”

U.S. officials have accused Pakistani intelligence of backing violence against U.S. targets in Afghanistan, although Pakistan denies the allegations.

U.S. officials cautioned that they had no immediate evidence of any direct connection between the Florida attack and Islamic State or other foreign extremist group, nor had they uncovered any contacts between Omar Mateen and any such group.

Fifty-three people were wounded in the rampage. It was the deadliest single U.S. mass shooting incident, eclipsing the 2007 massacre of 32 people at Virginia Tech university.

Seddique Mateen interviewed Afghan President Ashraf Ghani in January 2014, according to a video posted on his YouTube channel. The interview touched on economic development and youth unemployment in Afghanistan. Khatab said Mateen conducted the interview in Kabul and brought it to California for broadcast.

During the interview Mateen praised Ghani but by the following year had changed his views, apparently angered by Ghani’s outreach to Pakistan in his bid to start peace talks with the Taliban. In a 2015 video, Mateen declared his own candidacy for the Afghan presidency, even though there was no election at that time.

In the videos, he wears a Western suit and tie and speaks Dari, a dialect of Persian spoken in northern Afghanistan. He harshly criticizes Ghani’s policies both at home and abroad and lashes out at Pakistan, its intelligence service, former Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and some senior Afghan government officials and jihadist figures.

In a February video on his Facebook page, he addresses Taliban members and castigates them for being the “servants” of the ISI.

In a June 11 video posted on Facebook, Mateen is dressed in military fatigues and says Afghanistan must “punish the traitors.”

“I wish a hero one day removes Ashraf Ghani’s turban and slaps this crazy man,” he said in the video. “This traitor has rolled up his sleeves to destroy our country.”

On Twitter, Ghani condemned the Orlando attack and called it an “act of terror.”

(Additional reporting by Yasmeen Abutaleb in San Francisco and Hamid Shalizi in Kabul; Editing by Bill Trott)

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ORLANDO, Fla. (Reuters) – A man armed with an assault rifle killed 50 people at a packed gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, on Sunday in the worst mass shooting in U.S. history, which President Barack Obama described as an act of terror and hate.

Police killed the shooter, who was identified as Omar Mateen, 29, a Florida resident and U.S. citizen who was the son of immigrants from Afghanistan.

Law enforcement officials were probing evidence that suggested the attack may have been inspired by Islamic State militants, although they cautioned there was no proof that Mateen had worked directly with the group.

“It has been reported that Mateen made calls to 911 this morning in which he stated his allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State,” said Ronald Hopper, the FBI’s assistant special agent in charge on the case.

Shots rang out at the crowded nightclub, in the heart of one the United States’ most popular tourist destination cities, as some 350 people had packed in during celebrations of gay pride week. Clubgoers described scenes of terror, with one man who escaped saying he hid under a car and bandaged a wounded stranger.

“Words cannot and will not describe the feeling of that,” clubgoer Joshua McGill said in a posting on Facebook. “Being covered in blood. Trying to save a guy’s life.”

Fifty-three people were wounded in the rampage. It was the deadliest single U.S. mass shooting incident, eclipsing the 2007 massacre of 32 people at Virginia Tech university.

“We know enough to say this was an act of terror, an act of hate,” Obama said in a speech from the White House. “As Americans, we are united in grief, in outrage and in resolve to defend our people.”

U.S. officials cautioned, however, that they had no conclusive evidence of any direct connection with Islamic State or any other foreign extremist group.

“So far as we know at this time, his first direct contact was a pledge of bayat (loyalty) he made during the massacre,” said a U.S. counter terrorism official. “This guy appears to have been pretty screwed up without any help from anybody.”

The attack came six months after a married couple in California fatally shot 14 people in San Bernardino in an attack inspired by Islamic State.

‘UNIMAGINABLE’

The shooting evolved into a hostage situation, which a team of SWAT officers ended around dawn when they used armoured cars to storm the club before shooting dead the gunman. It was unclear when the victims were killed.

The number of dead shocked officials in Orlando, a city of 270,000 people and home to tourist attractions including the Disney World resort. They had initially put the death toll at 20.

“We’re dealing with something that we never imagined and is unimaginable,” Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer said. He said 39 people died inside the club, two outside, and nine others died after being rushed to hospital.

Orlando Regional Medical Center hospital said it had admitted 44 victims, including nine who died, and had carried out 26 operations on victims.

The city of Orlando, which drew 62 million visitors in 2014,  began releasing names of the victims on Sunday, with the first four identified as Edward Sotomayor Jr., Stanley Almodovar, Luis Omar Ocasio-Capo and Juan Ramon Guerrero.

PRIOR FBI INTERVIEWS

Mateen had twice been interviewed by FBI agents, in 2013 and 2014, after making comments to co-workers indicating he supported militant groups, but neither interview led to evidence of criminal activity, the FBI’s Hopper said.

A dozen unmarked police cars had gathered around a Port Saint Lucie house that appeared to be linked to the gunman.

Likely Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who has called for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States, said he was “right on radical Islamic terrorism” and called on Obama to resign because he did not say the words “radical Islam” in his statement responding to the shooting.

Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton tweeted a brief statement after the attacks, but did not speculate on the motives of the gunman.

Florida Governor Rick Scott called for Americans to hold a moment of silence at 6 p.m. EDT (2200 GMT) to commemorate the dead. World leaders including Pope Francis, Britain’s Queen Elizabeth and the leaders of Canada and Afghanistan condemned the attack.

Mateen was born in New York of parents who were immigrants from Afghanistan, according to a federal official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

If confirmed as an act of terrorism, it would be the deadliest such attack on U.S. soil since Sept. 11, 2001, when al Qaeda-trained hijackers crashed jetliners into New York’s World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania, killing some 3,000 people.

Mateen also referenced the ethnic Chechen brothers who killed three people in a bombing attack at the Boston Marathon in 2013, according to law enforcement officials.

The Orlando attacker was carrying an AR-15 style assault rifle and a handgun, Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings said. He also had an unidentified “device,” said Orlando Police Chief John Mina.

The choice of target was especially heart-wrenching for members of the U.S. lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, said LGBT advocacy group Equality Florida.

“Gay clubs hold a significant place in LGBTQ history. They were often the only safe gathering place and this horrific act strikes directly at our sense of safety,” the group said in a statement. “We will await the details in tears of sadness and anger.”

(Additional reporting by Letitia Stein in Tampa, Fla., Zachary Fagenson in Port Saint Lucie, Fla., Colleen Jenkins in Winston-Salem, N.C. and Jonathan Landay and Mark Hosenball in Washington; Writing by Scott Malone and Daniel Wallis; Editing by Alistair Bell and Peter Cooney)

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