Two people who escaped the Las Vegas country music festival shooting have told how they crawled out as bullets ricocheted near their feet, and say hundreds of shots were fired.
At least twenty people were killed and more than 100 wounded during a shooting at an outdoor music festival on the Las Vegas Strip late Sunday local time (tonight NZT).
Dozens of patrol vehicles descended on the Strip after authorities received reports of an active shooter near the Route 91 Harvest Festival.
Las Vegas police later said the shooter, a local resident, had been killed on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel.
Concert-goers reported seeing muzzle flashes from the upper floors of the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino across Las Vegas Boulevard from the Route 91 Harvest Festival and the sound of what they described as automatic gunfire.
Speaking five minutes after escaping unscathed, a man told an NBC news reporter the shooting was "Clip after clip, after clip, bullets flying everywhere, everybody running. It was really bad".
"We were the furthest VIP stages away from Mandalay Bay and they were ricocheting everywhere. They were firing from somewhere high and they were unloading clip after clip after clip after clip."
The man said there "had to be" multiple shooters and "there was obviously people hit".
The man and a woman with him said they had just seen a victim drive by "hanging out the back of a truck getting CPR".
The woman said: There were bullets ricocheting like down by the bottom of our feet because we all got on the floor crawling out, rushing, 'cause everybody's rushing out.
The man said "There were hundreds of shots" and at first they sounded like a firecracker ,"then it end up sounding not like a firecracker at all".
Witnesses said they were watching Jason Aldean's performance when they heard what sounded like fireworks.
The music stopped temporarily and started up again before another round of pops sent the performers ducking for cover and fleeing the stage.
Thousands fled as bursts of gunfire could be heard for more than five minutes, a witness said.
Witnesses said they saw multiple victims and dozens of ambulances near the concert venue. Some attendees later huddled in the basement of the nearby Tropicana hotel-casino.
Officers carrying assault rifles ran into the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino and authorities shut down part of the Las Vegas Strip and Interstate 15.
Some flights destined for the McCarran International Airport were diverted due to the shooting.
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