Security guard killed in Washington museum shooting

A gunman opened fire at the Holocaust museum here yesterday hitting a security guard before being wounded himself, sparking panic in Washington's tourist area, officials and witnesses said.

The gunman and security guard were taken to a hospital with gunshot wounds, where the security guard died later in the evening. A third person was slightly wounded, possibly by breaking glass, but did not need further treatment.

While the motive for the shooting remained unclear, television networks reported that the gunman was James von Brunn, 88, who may have links to a white supremacist organization.

As helicopters whirred overhead and police closed off nearby roads, police Sergeant David Schlosser told reporters the gunman had walked into the building carrying "a long gun."

"The man that initially entered the museum fired at one of the security officers. So, both that security officer and the gunman received gunshot wounds," Sergeant Schlosser told reporters.

"My understanding is that two other security officers at the museum returned gunfire at the man that had entered the museum.

"Both the security guard that was initially shot and that gunman have been transported to George Washington University hospital, and I don't know the condition of them."

Witness Angela Andelson, 22, visiting from San Francisco, said she heard possibly five shots fired. "I was by the entrance when the gunman came in. I was walking toward the exit on the other side of the entrance," she said.

"I heard a shot and thought it was sort of a loud, like someone had dropped something. So I kind of turned to look.

"And I see all these security guards kind of like ducking. I kind of glanced again and saw a gunman coming in... a long looking kind of gun. I just ran in to one of the exhibits to try to take cover.

"I heard the first one. When I turned and looked there were maybe two to four more shots that I heard," said Ms Andelson, adding "people were screaming and ducking down getting on the floor, getting under benches."

Another witness, Maria Hernandez, had been with her grandparents walking through the haunting exhibits which chronicle the Holocaust and the genocide of six million Jews under the Nazis.

"We were in the exhibit 'Remember the Children' and we heard rounds fired and through the glass doors I saw a security guard firing towards the shooter and a man on his belly on the floor and when I looked back again, we were heading toward the exit, I saw blood all over the floor," she said.

"He was hit real bad."

The shooting comes just days after US President Barack Obama visited the Middle East and pressed Israel to halt the settlement building in the West Bank, and also paid tribute to those killed in the Holocaust with a visit to a Nazi death camp.

A spokesman for the museum said the building, which is about 500 metres from the White House, had been evacuated as the first shots were heard.

More than 30 million people have visited the museum since its opening in 1993, including 85 heads of state.

During a solemn visit to the former Nazi death camp at Buchenwald, Germany, last week Mr Obama renewed a historic commitment to Israel.