Four dead and 18 injured in mass shooting in Alabama

Police say at least four people were killed and 18 injured in a mass shooting in Birmingham, Alabama.

“Multiple gunmen fired multiple shots into a group of people” late Saturday night in the city’s Five Points South area, Birmingham police officer Truman Fitzgerald said.

Police found the bodies of two men and a woman at the scene, while a third man later died of gunshot wounds in hospital, Birmingham Police said.

The assailants are believed to have approached the scene in a vehicle before getting out and opening fire. No suspects have been arrested.

Mr Fitzgerald added that they believed the shooting “was not random and stemmed from an isolated incident in which multiple victims were caught in the crossfire”.

Local news outlet Al.com quoted Police Chief Scott Thurmond as saying the shooting may have been the result of a murder-for-hire plot.

The intended target was the dead, Mr. Thurmond said at a news conference on Sunday.

“It’s not the place, it’s the person, so wherever that person is, that’s where it’s going to happen, wherever they can catch that individual,” Thurmond said. “It’s just where they happen to catch them.”

The remaining victims – all standing outside – are so far believed to have been shot.

Four people suffered life-threatening injuries, Fitzgerald said.

The BBC has contacted Birmingham Police for comment.

Authorities are also trying to find the shooters.

Police said in a statement that they were working with the FBI and other federal agencies, offering a $5,000 reward for information and have opened a portal for submitting photos and videos of the incident.

The Five Points South area is known for its nightlife. The shooting happened on Magnolia Avenue, Fitzgerald said.

Witnesses were lining up outside a hookah and cigar bar on Magnolia Avenue at the time. told local news site Al.com that some of the gunshots sounded like they came from a gun modified to fire fully automatically.

Earlier on Sunday, Mr Fitzgerald told reporters there were “dozens of gunshot victims” following the incident.

Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin blamed “Glock switches” – devices that can be attached to pistols to cause them to fire automatically – for the violence, posting on social media on Sunday that they “are the number one public safety issue in our city and state.”

“Converting a semi-automatic weapon to a fully automatic weapon that can fire all its ammunition in seconds is not normal in our country,” he wrote, adding that the city does not have the authority to ban the use of Glock switches, only the state does.

Later Sunday, he told CNN that more than 100 shell casings were found at the crime scene.

According to statistics, there have been more than 400 mass shootings across the United States this year. Gun Violence Archives, defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people are injured or killed.

The Birmingham incident was the second mass shooting in the city in two months and the third mass killing of 2024, according to Al.com.