HONG KONG - Hong Kong singer Leo Ku and his wife were holed up in a nearby hotel when a gunman opened fire on the Las Vegas strip from a hotel room in the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino on Sunday (Oct 1) night, reported Hong Kong media.

"I was holding my wife in my arms under the table, having no idea where exactly was the shooting occurring, what I could do, and what would happen next," Ku said.

Ku, 45, had arrived with his wife in the Nevada city on Sunday for "a few days off" after wrapping up his concert in San Francisco. His wife Lorraine Chan, 48, was his assistant and girlfriend of two decades before the couple tied the knot in the Nevada city in 2014.

Ku said that he fell into a short trance as people around him were running and screaming when gunfire erupted.

Police said Stephen Craig Paddock, 64, who had no criminal record, smashed windows in his 32nd floor hotel room shortly after 10.00pm local time and trained bursts of automatic weapons fire on thousands of people attending a country music concert below on the strip.

The Ku couple and their friends hid under a gambling table in the Bellagio hotel, which was 2.6km away from the Mandalay Bay Resort.

The Bellagio crowd panicked and people were scrambling for cover, Ku recalled on a Hong Kong radio programme on Tuesday (Oct 3) morning.

Ku said when he regained his senses, they moved to a stairway at the back of the building for shelter, reported South China Morning Post.

They met a family from South Korea and together they all moved to a higher floor of the hotel to seek safety. All the hotel lifts were shut down.

But because none of them had a room at the Bellagio, he and his friends could only stay in the hallway while waiting for news from the authorities.

"Some foreigners also came out of their rooms to offer help, lending us (phone) batteries and blankets in case we had to stay overnight in the corridor."

In a message posted on his official Weibo account, Leo said he and his wife had to remain the Bellagio hotel for around six hours as police imposed a lockdown on all Las Vegas hotels following the shooting, the worst mass shooting in recent US history.

The couple returned to their own hotel at around 5am on Monday.

At least 59 people were killed and more than 500 wounded in the Sunday night incident.

At 5.33am on Monday, local authorities announced that gunman was found dead in his hotel room at the Mandalay Bay hotel.