Orlando club shootings: Full fury of gun battle emerges

The authorities in Orlando, Florida, have been giving more details of the gun attack on a gay club early on Sunday, when 49 people were killed.

The deadliest mass shooting in recent US history ended with gunman Omar Mateen being killed himself. The attack also left 53 people injured.

After Mateen holed up in a toilet with hostages at the Pulse club, police tried to blow a hole in a wall.

When that failed, they used a Bearcat armoured vehicle to break through.

Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer praised the “heroic acts” of the city’s police department, law enforcement agencies and citizens.

The authorities made clear that the death toll from the shooting was 49; an earlier figure of 50 included the gunman, who was shot dead by police.

An off-duty officer working at the club had initially fought Mateen in a gun battle. Shortly after, more police officers arrived.

They engaged Mateen, forcing him to retreat to the toilet, where he was holding hostages, Orlando police chief John Mina said.

Mateen phoned the police from the toilet, Mr Mina said, and made a pledge of allegiance to the so-called Islamic State group (IS) while speaking to them.

Chief Mina said that statements made by the suspect while he was holed up in the toilet, and information from people trapped inside, had convinced police that further loss of life was imminent.

After officers broke through the wall, “dozens and dozens” of people emerged from the hole, the police chief said.

Mateen himself came out shooting and was killed, he added.

Mateen, a US citizen of Afghan descent who was born in New York and lived in Florida, was not on a terrorism watch list.

However, the FBI interviewed him twice in 2013-14 after he made “inflammatory remarks” to a colleague, before closing its investigation.

Mateen had legally purchased several guns in the days before the attack.

Seddique Mateen, the father of the gunman, said he did not know that his son had a “grudge in his heart” and did not understand why his son had carried out the shooting.

Analysis: Gordon Corera, BBC Security Correspondent

The FBI’s admission that it investigated Mateen on a number of occasions will raise questions not just for law enforcement but for the wider US security community.

It has frequently been the case in a number of countries that individuals are assessed as not dangerous at one point and then turn out to be a threat later. In the UK, this led the Security Service to place more emphasis on going back and checking up on previous cases to ensure that the threat assessment made in the past had not changed.

Keeping detailed files and watch on people can be resource-intensive, however, and has raised concerns over civil liberties in the past.

As the concern over home-grown terrorism in the US grows, there may be pressure to do more and there may also be further questions as to whether a previous investigation for possible terrorism should place people not just on No-Fly lists, but also restrict their ability to purchase weapons.

Sitora Yusufiy lived with Mateen for four months in 2009. She said her family had “rescued” her from the relationship when they became aware he was being physically abusive.

He beat her up regularly during their short-lived marriage for trivial things like not doing laundry, she said.

“When he would get in his tempers, he would express hate toward everything. He was mentally unstable and mentally ill: that’s the only explanation that I could give.”

The reaction

Cities around the world have been flying rainbow gay pride flags and illuminating buildings in solidarity with the victims of the shooting in Florida.

President Barack Obama called the attack an “act of terror” and an “act of hate”.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said on Monday that the US needed to stop the flow of Syrian refugees to prevent such attacks.

He also blamed the Muslim community for not reporting Mateen to the authorities, despite suspicions that he was a “whack job”.

People knew it was going to happen but they did not report him, he said.

BBC