Teenager shot at US middle school

WASHINGTON - Agence France-Presse

Children look for their parents from a school bus near Price Middle School following a shooting at the school in Atlanta, Georgia, January 31, 2013. REUTERS Photo

A teenage student was shot Thursday at a middle school in Atlanta, Georgia with the victim hospitalized but "alert," police said, after the latest gun attack against young Americans.
 
In a statement posted on their Facebook page, the Atlanta police said the victim, whom they did not identify, was shot outside Price Middle School, and was "transported alert, conscious and breathing to Grady hospital." US media has reported that the person shot was a 14-year-old male.
 
The police also said a suspect had been taken into custody.
 
Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed condemned the shooting and others like it as "unconscionable," and said gun attacks in and around US schools "must end." "Too many young people are being harmed, and too many families are suffering from unimaginable and unnecessary grief," he added in a message that was posted on the city's website.
 
It had been earlier reported that a teacher at the school was also shot, but the police statement did not mention any further injured.
 
The shooting is the latest to occur as the United States wrestles with a spate of gun violence. A massacre last month at the Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut left 20 young children and six adults dead.
 
In the wake of that shooting President Barack Obama vowed to introduce gun reform, a hugely controversial issue in the United States where the right to bear arms in enshrined in the constitution.