CHICAGO, US

Authorities in the US state of New Jersey are looking for answers after a mass shooting Saturday night at a large house party left a man and a woman dead and at least 14 others injured.

Police had made no arrests by late Sunday afternoon and have offered no motive yet for the violence.

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy released a statement calling the shooting "horrific" and "despicable and cowardly," noting that the victims and their families are "in our prayers.”

The house party reportedly attracted more than 100 people, but very little information on the shooting trickled out Sunday. Police were called to the large house in a rural area close to midnight on Saturday. A neighbor told local TV station WPVI that he heard roughly nine gunshots in rapid succession at the house and daytime video showed the front yard of the house littered with debris.

The shooting was the latest amid a rise in nationwide gun violence in 2021, and it was a particularly brutal weekend: a couple of hours after the New Jersey shooting, an argument outside a bar in eastern Ohio led to gunfire that left three people dead and eight others injured. About 24 hours earlier, two people were killed and eight more injured when an argument in downtown Minneapolis led to gunfire. In that shooting, there were two suspected gunmen; one was arrested and the other was killed.​​​​​​​

The shootings have triggered more calls for stricter gun control, long a contentious issue in America. Governor Murphy added in his statement that his state "leads the nation in passing and enforcing strong and commonsense gun safety laws. No community should ever experience what occurred last night."/aa