The Oregonian says the federal law enforcement officials are looking into whether the attack had a religious, racial or other hate-related motive.
Via the Associated Press, President Obama's forceful and emotional response to the shooting:
A visibly frustrated President Barack Obama said Thursday that thoughts and prayers are no longer enough as Americans respond to another deadly school shooting, and he challenged voters wanting to deal with the problem to vote for elected officials who agree with that priority.
Obama addressed the nation from the White House after at least 10 people were killed by a 20-year-old gunman at Umpqua Community College in southwestern Oregon. As he noted, he's done this before. Mass shootings have become embedded in the arc of Obama's presidency. He's traveled to Aurora, Colorado; Tucson, Arizona; Charleston, South Carolina, and numerous other cities to mourn victims of gun violence.
Obama said the nation's response to mass shootings has become routine — from the reporting by the media, to his own comments, to the opposition to gun control laws aimed at deterring the violence.
"We've become numb to this," Obama said.
Obama at times spoke with anger in his voice and the muscles in his jaw tensed up as he seemed to struggle to find the right words.
He said it's clear that anyone responsible for such carnage has a sickness in his mind. He said other nations also have mentally ill residents who want to harm others, but the United States is alone in the sheer depth of the problem.
"We are the only advanced country on earth that sees these kinds of mass shootings every few months," Obama said.
Obama has sought changes in the nation's gun laws, though it's unclear at this initial stage of the investigation whether the changes often proposed — such as expanded background checks, stricter magazine limits and an assault weapons ban — would have prevented Thursday's massacre.
"It cannot be this easy for somebody who wants to inflict harm on other people to get his or her hands on a gun," Obama said.
"I hope and pray that I don't have to come out again during my tenure as president to offer my condolences to families in these circumstances," Obama said. "But based on my experience as president, I can't guarantee that. And that's terrible to say."
Read the latest (7:10 p.m. PDT) Associated Press writethrough on the shooting.
Update, 3:35 p.m.
The first word that something had gone seriously wrong Thursday at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, came via a 10:38 a.m. report from campus of an armed man outside a classroom building.
"This is going to be the Snyder Hall," a Douglas County police dispatcher told responding officers (audio embedded below). "Somebody's outside one of the doors, shooting through the door. ... We do have one female who has been shot at this time."
Oregon officials say the toll now stands at 13 dead and 20 wounded after the unidentified gunman opened fire in at least one classroom before dying during a shootout with police. The massacre ranks as one of the worst in the nation's recent history of mass shootings.
The Roseburg News-Review quotes a witness from one class the gunman entered, saying the attacker questioned some students about their religious affiliations before opening fire:
Kortney Moore, 18, from Rogue River, was in her Writing 115 class in Snyder Hall when one shot came through a window. She saw her teacher get shot in the head. The shooter was inside at that point, and he told people to get on the ground. The shooter was asking people to stand up and state their religion and then started firing away, Moore said. Moore was lying there with people who had been shot.
Brady Winder, 23, of Portland, said he was in the room next door when he heard a loud thud that didn’t sound like a gunshot. He then heard a percussion of gunshots and the students all fled out the front door.
They left “like ants, people screaming, “Get out!” Winder said.
He saw a girl swim across the creek while fleeing.
Hannah Miles was in a class room next door to the shooting in Snyder Hall. Miles said they heard a sound next door that sounded like a yardstick slapping on a chalkboard. Then they heard the noise again. A teacher went to see if everything was all right, at which point it went off repeatedly and someone said everybody get out now. They got out as quickly as possible. They left everything behind.
Here's the latest writethrough on the Roseburg shooting from the Associated Press:
By Jeff Barnard and Gosia Wozniaka
Associated Press
ROSEBURG, Oregon -- A gunman opened fire at a rural Oregon community college Thursday, killing at least nine people before dying in a shootout with police, authorities said. One survivor said he demanded his victims state their religion before he started shooting.
The killer, identified only as a 20-year-old man, invaded a classroom at Umpqua Community College in the small timber town of Roseburg, about 180 miles south of Portland. Authorities shed no light on his motive and said they were investigating.
Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin said 10 people were dead and seven wounded after the attack. He did not clarify whether the number of dead included the gunman.
Earlier, Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum said 13 people were killed. It was unclear what led to the discrepancy.
"It's been a terrible day," a grim-faced Hanlin said. "Certainly this is a huge shock to our community."
Hours after the attack, a visibly angry President Obama spoke to reporters at the White House, saying the U.S. is becoming numb to mass shootings and that the shooters have "sickness" in their minds.
Repeating his support for tighter gun-control measures, the president said thoughts and prayers are no longer enough in such situations because they do nothing to stop similar attacks from happening a few weeks or months later. He challenged voters wanting to confront the problem to vote for elected officials who will act.
Police began receiving calls about a campus shooting at 10:38 a.m. The school has a single unarmed security guard.
Kortney Moore, 18, said she was in a freshman writing class when a shot came through the window and hit the teacher in the head.
The gunman then entered the Snyder Hall classroom and told people to get on the floor, she told the Roseburg News-Review newspaper. He told people to stand up and state their religion before opening fire.
Next door, students heard a loud thud and then a volley of gunfire, Brady Winder, 23, told the newspaper.
Students scrambled "like ants, people screaming, 'Get out!'" Winder said. He said one woman swam across a creek to get away.
The sheriff said officers had a shootout with the gunman, but it was not clear if he was killed by authorities or whether he took his own life.
The gunfire sparked panic as students ran for safety and police and ambulances rushed to the scene.
Lorie Andrews, who lives across the street from the campus, heard what sounded like fireworks and then saw police cruisers streaming in. She spoke with students as they left.
"One girl came out wrapped in a blanket with blood on her," she said.
Some students were in tears as they left. Police lined up students in a parking lot with their hands over their heads and searched them before they were bused with faculty to the nearby county fairgrounds, where counselors were available and some parents waited for their children.
Jessica Chandler of Myrtle Creek, south of Roseburg, was at the fairgrounds desperately seeking information about her 18-year-old daughter, Rebecka Carnes.
"I don't know where she is. I don't know if she's wounded. I have no idea where she's at," Chandler said.
Carnes' best friend told Chandler that her daughter had been flown by helicopter to a hospital, but she had not been able to find her at area medical centers.
Interim college President Rita Cavin said it was awful to watch families waiting for the last bus of survivors and their loved ones were not on it.
"This is a tragedy and an anomaly," she said. "We have a wonderful, warm, loving and friendly campus."
Officials at Mercy Medical Center in Roseburg, Oregon, said four of the wounded were hospitalized there and were expected to survive. Three other patients were transferred to a hospital in Springfield.
The sheriff described the town of 22,000 as a peaceful community that has crime like any other. In fact, it's no stranger to school gun violence. A freshman at the local high school shot and wounded a fellow student in 2006.
The sheriff has been vocal in opposing state and federal gun-control legislation. Earlier this year, he testified against a bill to require background checks on private, person-to-person gun sales and told a legislative committee in March that a background-check mandate would not prevent criminals from getting firearms.
He said the state should combat gun violence by cracking down on convicted criminals found with guns, and by addressing people with unmanaged mental health problems.
In 2013, Hanlin also sent a letter to Vice President Joe Biden after the shooting at a Newtown, Connecticut, elementary school, declaring that he and his deputies would refuse to enforce new gun-control restrictions "offending the constitutional rights of my citizens."
Before the shooting, a posting on the message-board site 4chan included a photo of a crudely drawn frog used regularly in Internet memes with a gun and warned other users not to go to school Thursday in the Northwest. The messages that followed spoke of mass shootings, with some egging on and even offering tips to the original poster. It's unclear if the messages are tied to the shooting because of the largely anonymous nature of the site.
The community along Interstate 5 west of the Cascade Mountains is in an area where the timber industry has struggled. In recent years, officials have tried to promote the region as a tourist destination for vineyards and outdoor activities.
Many of the students in local school district go on to attend the college of 3,000 students.
"We are a small, tight community, and there is no doubt that we will have staff and students that have family and friends impacted by this event," Roseburg Public Schools Superintendent Gerry Washburn said.
Former UCC President Joe Olson, who retired in June after four years, said the school had no formal security staff, just one officer on a shift.
One of the biggest debates on campus last year was whether to post armed security officers on campus to respond to a shooting.
"I suspect this is going to start a discussion across the country about how community colleges prepare themselves for events like this," he said.
There were no immediate plans to upgrade security on the campus in light of the shooting, Cavin said.