Thousands of mourners have marked one year since 32 people were shot dead in a massacre at a US university in Virginia.
They stood quietly in front of a memorial to the victims on the Virginia Tech drill field, just steps away from the academic building where student Cho Seung-Hui went on a rampage in the worst campus shooting in US history.
The memorial, an arc of granite blocks each bearing the name of one of the 27 students and five lecturers who died, was covered in bouquets of white flowers, as well as mementos left by the victims' friends and families.
The names of each of Cho's victims were read aloud with a brief description of what they had done and what they were like.
Survivors of the shooting, some of whom only stayed alive by playing dead, were present at the ceremony.
Behind the podium was Norris Hall, where 23-year-old Cho locked the doors from the inside before gunning down 30 people and then killing himself.
Earlier that morning, he had shot dead two others in a dormitory across campus.
Security has been tightened on campus since the shooting, with extra patrol officers and a lockdown on faculty and residential buildings.
