Shooting at Louisiana technical college in Baton Rouge

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AFP) — A female student shot dead two other women before turning the gun on herself at a college in the southern state of Louisiana Friday, in the latest deadly episode in a week of shootings.

Around 20 students were in the second-floor room during the shooting, which occurred about 8:30 a.m. Friday.

"About 8:36 a.m., we began receiving multiple phone calls from inside Louisiana Technical College...multiple calls from cellphones, saying shots were being fired, people had been shot."

Police were there within four minutes and ran into the building. "There was mass pandemonium, people running. One officer—the first into the classroom—told me he could still smell gunpowder."

Police in the city of Baton Rouge said they had found three women who had apparently all died from gunshot wounds in a technical college classroom.

"It appears that one of the deceased is the actual shooter, that she shot two other young women inside the classroom, killing both of them before then turning the gun on herself," police Sergeant Don Kelly told reporters.

He said no other students were involved or were in any danger.

The shooting came at the end of a bloody week in the United States. On Thursday, a gunman opened fire at an Ohio school, wounding his estranged wife in front of her students before fleeing and later killing himself after a three-hour standoff.

He had earlier stabbed another woman believed to be one of his wife's friends prior to going to the school.

Also on Thursday, a suburban city council meeting in the Midwestern state of Missouri became a scene of carnage when an enraged gunman burst in and shot seven people, five of them fatally.

He managed to kill two police officers and three city employees before police shot him dead, St Louis County Police spokeswoman Tracy Panus told AFP.

The man, who had a history of interrupting council meetings with complaints about persecution by officials, rushed into the council chambers as the meeting was getting under way, witnesses said.

In California on Thursday, a man suspected of murdering three family members shot dead a Los Angeles SWAT team police officer and wounded another during a bloody gunbattle.

The fatality was the first in the 41-year history of the Los Angeles Police Department's elite tactical response unit, police said.

The stand-off ended after police fired tear gas into the home. The gunman was arrested and handcuffed as thick smoke poured out of the building, which was surrounded by around 200 police officers.

The latest incidents came less than a week after five women were shot dead Saturday at a shopping mall in Chicago's fastest-growing suburb, sparking a widescale manhunt.

The women were found dead in the back of a clothing store in what was believed to be a botched robbery described by the family of one of the victims as a "senseless act of violence."

Mass shootings such as the 1999 Columbine High School massacre and last year's deadly rampage at Virginia Tech university drew massive worldwide attention and sparked debate in the United States over gun ownership.

Smaller scale incidents have continued to be a regular occurrence across the country, with 80 people dying of gunshot wounds each day and twice as many being wounded, according to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.