7 killed, 20 injured in Kansas shooting spree

At least seven people have reported killed and up to 20 injured in a mass shooting in Hesston, Kansas, US.

The shooting that began on roadways and ended at the assailant's work site, where authorities shot and killed him, the local sheriff told media persons.

The gunman appears to have driven around in a car, opening fire at three locations before entering the building of a lawnmower manufacturer in the town of Hesston, Harvey County Sheriff T Walton said.

The shooter, identified by a dispatcher with the Sheriff's Department as 38-year-old Cedric Ford, began his attacks at about 5 pm local time in the town of Newton, where a man driving a truck was shot in the shoulder, Walton said.

A factory employee, Marty Pierce, told KAKE-TV, a local ABC affiliate, that the gunman entered the plant and "started spraying everyone" with bullets in the assembly area near the paint department.

"I thought it was a fire or an explosion. I didn’t know someone was shooting, but then our robot operator decided to go look down the hallway and he got shot," Pierce said.

Pierce told the news organization he heard his coworkers yelling "fire" and that he narrowly missed being hit.

"They were saying, 'Fire, fire,'" Pierce said. "We didn't know they were getting shot."

The series of shootings about 60 km north of Wichita come less than a week after a Michigan man who worked as a driver for car-hailing service Uber was charged with killing six people during a shooting rampage.

A number of mass shootings in the United States have elevated gun control as a campaign issue in the November US presidential election.