A fifth girl died of injuries in hospital Tuesday after four girls had been killed in a shooting rampage at an Amish school on Monday in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
 
The girl "passed away this morning at approximately 4:30 AM (0830 GMT) just after being removed from life support," said a spokesman for Pennsylvania State Hershey Medical Center in Hershey, Pennsylvania.

The spokesman said the girl had suffered severe injuries from a gunshot wound to the head.

According to CNN television reports, the gunman, a 32-year-old milk truck driver named Charles Carl Roberts, had seized and held a dozen girls as hostages in the one-room school for about half an hour, before killing three of the hostages and himself as police tried to break into the house.

At least seven people were taken to hospitals, including at least three girls in critical condition with gunshot wounds.

Police said that Roberts had walked into the one-room West Nickel Mines Amish School with a shotgun and handgun, then released about 15 boys, a pregnant woman and three other women with infants before barring the doors with a dozen girls inside.

Roberts' wife said her husband had assaulted the school in revenge for something that had happened 20 years ago, but police said the gunman had apparently focused on young female victims.

The school, which has only 25 to 30 students in all, is surrounded by a white board fence and is about 88 kilometers west of Philadelphia.

It is the third deadly school shooting incident in the United States since last week.

On Friday, a school principal was gunned down in Cazenovia, Wisconsin, by a teenage student and on Tuesday an adult gunman held six girls hostage in a school at Bailey, Colorado, before killing a 16-year-old girl and then himself.

(Xinhua News Agency October 4, 2006)