REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, CHArLESTON -- Police in Charleston, South Carolina, on Thursday were searching for a white gunman who killed nine people in a historic African-American church in an attack that police and the city's mayor described as a hate crime.

The shooter, a 21-year-old white man with sandy blond hair, sat with hurchgoers inside Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church for about an hour on Wednesday before opening fire, Police Chief Gregory Mullen said.

The gunman, who is considered extremely dangerous, had yet to be caught, Mullen said, and police did not have a sense of where he might be.

"This is an unfathomable and unspeakable act by somebody filled with hate and with a deranged mind," Charleston Mayor Joe Riley told reporters.

Six females and three males died in the attack, Mullen said.

The shooting recalled the 1963 bombing of an African-American church in Birmingham, Alabama, that killed four girls and galvanized the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

The Charleston church is one of the largest and oldest black congregations in the South, according to its website. It has its roots in the early 19th century, and was founded in part by a freed slave who was later executed for organizing a revolt, according to the U.S. National Park Service.

"This tragedy that we are addressing right now is indescribable," Mullen said. "We are committed to do whatever is necessary to bring this individual to justice."

The attack follows the April shooting of an unarmed black man in neighboring North Charleston by a white police officer. The officer has been charged with murder in that case, one of a number of deaths of unarmed black men in encounters with police that have raised racial tensions in the United States.

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