Four people died Friday and several police officers were wounded in a shooting spree in rural Pennsylvania, officials said. The shootings, exactly a week after a massacre of 20 children and six adults at a school in Connecticut, "happened over a large area" near Geeseyetown, in a remote part of the eastern US state, Diane Meling, a spokeswoman for the Blair County Emergency Management Agency, told AFP.

"Four people were shot dead. That number of four includes the alleged shooter," she said. "There were several Pennsylvania state troopers injured, I understand none seriously." The emergency was over, officials said. It came as a national debate on gun laws went into high gear, with President Barack Obama saying he would support a new bill seeking a ban on assault rifles. In Newtown, Connecticut on December 14 a disturbed local man used such a rifle to carry out his massacre, before committing suicide.

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2012