LOS ANGELES (REUTERS) - Reports of gunfire at Savannah State University in Georgia on Thursday forced school officials to place the campus on lockdown for several hours as police secured the area, university officials said.

The lockdown was lifted around midnight on Friday, more than two hours after it was issued, and there was no active shooter on campus, an employee with the department of public safety said. She declined to give further information.

One person was hospitalised after being shot and wounded near or inside the student union, the Atlanta Journal Constitution newspaper and broadcaster WSBV-TV reported, citing a university official.

The school said in an email sent to students and staff just before midnight that "while public safety has lifted the campus lockdown and traffic has resumed, residential students are encouraged to remain in their rooms," the independent Tiger's Roar newspaper reported.

"The investigation into tonight's shooting is ongoing," the email said.

The campus of the historically black university is in the heart of Savannah, an Atlantic seaport that is Georgia's oldest city and the seat of Chatham County.

The Savannah incident came a day after two television journalists were slain by a gunman during a live broadcast in Virginia and about two months after the June 17 fatal shooting of nine parishioners at a landmark African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina.