Ten people have died following a shooting at a ballroom dance studio in the Californian city of Monterey Park, police said. Police say another 10 people are injured and the suspect remains at large.
The shooting happened at about 22:20 local time on Saturday (06:20 GMT on Sunday).
Thousands of people had earlier gathered in the city for the Monterey Park Lunar New Year festival.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said they are seeking a male suspect who fled the scene but did not provide any other details about him.
Captain Andrew Mayer said that emergency services arrived on the scene where they confirmed 10 people were dead.
At least 10 others have been injured and are in local hospitals, where their conditions vary from stable to critical.
Investigators said it was too early to say whether the incident was being treated as a hate crime.
Videos on social media showed a large police presence in the city, which is located about eight miles (13km) east of Los Angeles.
An eyewitness told the Los Angeles Times that three people ran into his restaurant and told him to lock the door as there was a man with a machine gun in the area.
“It appears to have happened at a dance studio nearby where a gunman came in with what an eyewitness described as a machine gun, some automatic gun that fired multiple rounds at mostly Asian-Americans,” Jeong Park, a reporter with the paper, told the BBC.
An eyewitness told him that someone fled in a car minutes later.
The annual Lunar New Year festival in Monterey Park is a weekend-long event that has previously drawn crowds of more than 100,000 visitors.
Saturday night’s festivities were scheduled to end at 21:00 local time.
Monterey Park has a population of about 60,000 people and is home to a large Asian community.
