A white man suspected of killing nine people in a Bible-study group at a historic African-American church in South Carolina has been arrested and US officials are investigating the attack as a hate crime.
Police detained alleged gunman Dylann Roof, 21, at a checkpoint in Shelby, North Carolina, about 350km north of Charleston.
Last night’s mass shooting occurred after the suspect had sat with parishioners at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church for an hour.
In a Facebook profile apparently belonging to Mr Roof, a photograph showed him wearing a jacket with the flags of apartheid-era South Africa and of the former Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, both formerly ruled by white minorities.
The victims, six women and three men, included Reverend Clementa Pinckney, who was the church's 41-year-old pastor and a Democratic member of the state Senate.
A man who identified himself as Carson Cowles, Mr Roof's uncle, told Reuters that Mr Roof’s father had recently given him a.45-caliber handgun as a birthday present and that Mr Roof had seemed adrift.
"I don't have any words for it," Mr Cowles said. "Nobody in my family had seen anything like this coming."
Other victims included Cynthia Hurd, who worked at the Charleston County Public Library, and Sharonda Coleman Singleton, an associate pastor at the church, according to statements by the library and Charleston Southern University, attended by Ms Singleton's son.
Five of the dead, four women and one man, were ministers at the church.
Eight victims were found dead in the church and a ninth died after being taken to hospital. Three people survived the attack.
Mr Roof was charged on two separate occasions earlier this year with a drug offence and trespassing, according to court documents.
Sylvia Johnson, a cousin of Rev Pinckney, told MSNBC that a survivor told her the gunman reloaded five times during the attack despite pleas for him to stop.
Police said Mr Roof was armed with a handgun but surrendered quietly when he was stopped.
US Attorney General Loretta Lynch said her office was investigating whether to charge Mr Roof with a hate crime motivated by racial or other prejudice.
Under federal and some state laws, such crimes typically carry harsher penalties, but South Carolina is one of just five US states not to have a hate-crimes law.
"The fact that this took place in a black church obviously raises questions about a dark part of our history," President Barack Obama told reporters.
"Once again, innocent people were killed in part because someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting their hands on a gun."
The 197-year-old church nicknamed "Mother Emanuel" is one of the oldest African-American Episcopal churches in the southeastern United States.
It was burned to the ground in the late 1820s after a slave revolt led by one of its founders.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, which researches US hate groups, said the attack illustrates the dangers that home-grown extremists pose.
"Since 9/11, our country has been fixated on the threat of Jihadi terrorism. But the horrific tragedy at the Emanuel AME reminds us that the threat of homegrown domestic terrorism is very real," the group said in a statement.
It said there have been 4,120 reported hate crimes across the US, including 56 murders, from 2003 until 2015.
Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton said the United States must face "hard truths" about race and violence.
"We have to face hard truths about race, violence, guns and division," she told a Las Vegas conference of Hispanic elected officials.
"How many innocent people in our country from little children, church members to movie theatre attendees, how many people do we need to see cut down before we act?"
