A soldier suffering from "mental health issues" opened fire at Fort Hood Wednesday, killing three soldiers and injuring 16 before killing himself, a post Army general said.
Army Lt. Gen. Mark Milley, the senior officer at the facility, also said at an evening news conference that there was no indication of terrorism, but added "we're not ruling anything out."
He said the shooter, identified earlier as Spc. Ivan Lopez, was armed with a .45 caliber Smith & Wesson and killed himself when confronted by military police in a parking lot.
Milley said he did not know any motive for the incident, but the shooter, who had served four months in combat in Iraq in 2011, had "behavioral and mental health issues" and was being treated for those.
The shooter was married with a family and had arrived at Fort Hood in February, Milley said. He did not identify the shooter by name, saying his family had not yet been notified. However, senior U.S. officials earlier named Lopez as the shooter.
Milley said he could confirm three victims had been killed, along with the shooter, and 16 injured were at two hospitals in the area.
The shooting, which began around 4 p.m. local time, occurred in two buildings at the post, the scene of a 2009 shooting that left 13 soldiers dead.
President Obama said the U.S. government will get to the bottom of what happened in the shooting, and said officials are doing everything they can to make sure everyone is secure.
"We're heartbroken that something like this might've happened again," Obama said.
Officials at Scott & White Temple Hospital in Temple, Texas, said in a press conference Wednesday evening the facility had received four patients from the shooting and another two were en route. The victims' conditions ranged from stable to critical, and included injuries to the abdomen, chest, neck and extremities.
It was not immediately clear where the other eight surviving victims were being treated.
“It’s chaos,” a source outside the hospital told FoxNews.com earlier Wednesday. “I see lots of ambulances coming in. There are helicopters everywhere.”
The sheriff's office dispatched deputies and troopers from the Texas Department of Public Safety to the nearby Texas Army base, Bell County Sheriff's Office Lt. Donnie Adams said.
Earlier, Fort Hood ordered everyone at the base to "shelter in place." The order was sent on the base's Twitter feed and posted on its Facebook page.
The 1st Calvary Division, which is based at Fort Hood, had sent a Twitter alert telling people on base to close doors and stay away from windows.
Relatives of soldiers waited for news about their loved ones.
Tayra DeHart, 33, said she had last heard from her husband, a soldier at the post, that he was safe, but that was hours earlier.
"The last two hours have been the most nerve-racking I've ever felt. I know God is here protecting me and all the soldiers, but I have my phone in my hand just hoping it will ring and it will be my husband," DeHart said.
Brooke Conover, whose husband was on base at the time of the shooting, said she found out about it while checking Facebook. She said she called her husband, Staff Sgt. Sean Conover, immediately to make sure he was OK, but he could not even tell her exactly what was going on, only that the base was locked down.
"I'm still hearing conflicting stories about what happened and where the shooting was exactly," Conover said in a telephone interview, explaining that she still did not know how close the incident was to her husband.
"I just want him to come home," said Conover, who moved to Fort Hood with her husband and three daughters two years ago.
In 2009, U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, a psychiatrist who had become a radical Muslim while serving in the military, killed 13 people and injured dozens more inside the Army post in Killeen, Texas. Hasan, who represented himself at a military trial after clashing with his appointed attorneys, was sentenced to death in August.
Fox News’ Martin Finn, Jennifer Griffin, Shayla Bezdrob, Jana Winter and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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