A manhunt was underway after four people were shot dead and four more wounded early yesterday outside a restaurant in Buffalo, New York, police said.

An argument or fight at a private party inside the restaurant spilled into the street where multiple shots were fired, according to Buffalo Police Department spokesman Michael DeGeorge.

He told AFP eight people were shot, four of them fatally. The dead included two men and two women.

The violence erupted at about 8.30 a.m. on Main Street where as many as 100 people were attending a formal party at City Grill restaurant.

“There was some type of incident” inside the restaurant, “and it then spilled outside and that’s when the shootings occurred,” DeGeorge told CNN.

He said police were still trying to determine who fired the shots, and whether it was a gunfight between several people or one or more shooters targeted attendees at the party.

“The second possibility is more likely,” DeGeorge said. “The search is on” for the shooters.

Three people were pronounced dead at the scene, while a fourth victim died in hospital, local broadcaster WKBW reported.

Of the injured, all of them male, one is in very critical condition, it added.

Among the dead was a Texas man who witnesses said arrived last Friday in Buffalo, a city in far western New York state near the Canadian border, and was going to be married yesterday, according to WKBW.