LEWISTON, Maine – Hundreds of police are searching the US city of Lewiston and surrounding areas of Maine for a man sought in connection with mass shootings at a bar and a bowling alley, leaving at least 18 dead and 13 injured.

State and local police identified Robert R. Card, 40, as a person of interest in the case after previously posting on Facebook photographs of a man wielding what appeared to be a semi-automatic rifle.

The pictures from one of Wednesday’s crime scenes showed a bearded man in a brown hoodie and jeans, holding the weapon in the firing position.

“We have literally hundreds of police officers working around the state of Maine to investigate this case to locate Card, who is a person of interest,” Maine Public Safety Commissioner Mike Sauschuck told a news conference.

Several media outlets reported that a Maine law enforcement bulletin identified Card as a trained firearms instructor and member of the US Army reserve, who recently reported he had mental health issues, including hearing voices. It said he also threatened to shoot up a National Guard base.

“Card was also reported to have been committed to (a) mental health facility for two weeks during summer 2023 and subsequently released,” said the notice from the Maine Information and Analysis Centre.

Reuters could not authenticate the bulletin. The Associated Press reported that it was circulated to law enforcement officials.

The bar and the bowling alley are about 6.5km apart in Lewiston, a former textile hub and city of 38,000 people in Androscoggin County about 56km north of Portland, Maine’s largest city.

Media reports picked up by Reuters earlier said there was a third shooting site at a Walmart distribution centre, but Walmart later issued a statement to local media saying no shooting occurred on their property.

The Central Maine Medical Centre in Lewiston issued a statement saying it was “reacting to a mass casualty, mass shooter event” and coordinating with area hospitals to take patients.

President Joe Biden has been briefed and will continue to receive updates, a United States official said in Washington.

Mr Biden spoke by phone individually to Maine Governor Janet Mills, senators Angus King and Susan Collins, and Representative Jared Golden about the shooting in Lewiston, and offered full federal support in the wake of the attack, the White House said.

News reports earlier said 22 were killed. That would have made the massacre the deadliest in the US since at least August 2019, when a gunman opened fire on shoppers at an El Paso Walmart with an AK-47 rifle.

He killed 23 people in a shooting that prosecutors branded an anti-Hispanic hate crime, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

The 18 fatalities would be on a par with the number of homicides that normally occur in Maine in any given year.

The number of annual homicides in the state has fluctuated between 16 and 29 since 2012, according to Maine State Police.

The number of US shootings in which four or more people were shot has surged since the Covid-19 pandemic began in 2020.

According to archive data, 647 of such shootings occurred in 2022, and 679 are projected to occur in 2023, based on trends as at July.

The deadliest US mass shooting on record is the massacre of 58 people by a gunman firing on a Las Vegas country music festival from a high-rise hotel perch in 2017. REUTERS