Base commander Lt. Gen. Robert Cone told reporters late Thursday that the shooter, identified as Hasan, was in custody and that he was expected to live, despite having been shot multiple times. Earlier, Cone had reported that Hasan had been killed, McClatchy News Service reported.

Cone also told McClatchy late Thursday that Hasan had not yet spoken to investigators.

Hasan was apparently dressed in a military uniform when he sprayed bullets at about 1:30 p.m. local time inside a crowded processing center for soldiers returning or about to be sent overseas.

After Hasan began firing, he was shot by a policewoman, who also was wounded, Core said. Cone noted that soldiers do not ordinarily carry weapons. ``As a matter of practice we do not carry weapons,'' he told McClatchy. ``This is our home.''

Cone said that as the shooting unfolded, bystanders quickly sealed off an auditorium about 50 yards away where a graduation ceremony was being held for 138 soldiers who had completed correspondence courses during their deployment. About 600 friends and family members were in the audience, Cone said.

As a parade of ambulances wailed to the scene of the shootings, officials said the extent of injuries to the wounded varied significantly, with some in critical condition and others lightly wounded. It was not immediately clear how many of the dead and wounded were soldiers.

Distraught Fort Hood family members, including parents rushing to pick up their children from daycare, gathered at the main gate after the base was locked down.

``When I first heard, I was in tears,'' said Cynthia Wood, whose son, Conner, was in day care on the base. ``It's very disheartening not being able to get your child.''

As she was talking to reporters, her husband, Army Spec. Joshua Wood, was sending her a frantic text message from Iraq asking for more details.

Monica Cain brushed back tears as she explained that she was unable to reach her husband, whom she'd taken to Fort Hood earlier in the day for medical treatment of a head injury he suffered in combat. Sgt. Barren Cain had told her he planned to call at 1 p.m. to summon her to pick him up. But by mid-afternoon, after news of the shooting spread across the region, she hadn't heard from him and was unable to reach him by cell phone.

``I don't know what's going on,'' she told McClatchy. ``I'm very scared.''

President Barack Obama called the shootings ``a horrific outburst of violence'' and urged Americans to pray for those who were killed and wounded. ``It is difficult enough when we lose these men and women in battles overseas,'' Obama said. ``It is horrifying that they should come under fire at an Army base on American soil.''

He pledged ``to get answers to every single question about this horrible incident.''

POSSIBLE MOTIVE

As a widespread investigation by the military, the FBI and other agencies began, much about the assault in Texas remained unclear. Homeland Security officials said the Army would take the lead in the investigation.

Born and raised in Virginia, the son of immigrant parents from a small town near Jerusalem, he joined the Army right out of high school, against his parents' wishes. The Army, in turn, put him through college and then medical school, where he trained to be a psychiatrist.

But Hasan started having second thoughts about his military career a few years ago after other soldiers harassed him for being a Muslim, he told relatives in Virginia.

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