A shooter opened fire with a rifle through the windows of a Catholic church in Minneapolis and struck children celebrating Mass during the first week of school, killing two and wounding 17 people in an act of violence the police chief called “absolutely incomprehensible.”

Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said the shooter — armed with a rifle, shotgun and pistol — approached the side of the church and shot dozens of rounds through the windows toward the children sitting in the pews during Mass at the Annunciation Catholic School just before 8:30 a.m. Police believe the shooter then killed himself.

The children who died were 8 and 10, and 14 other kids were among the wounded, the chief said. Dozens of youngsters were inside.

The police chief said the shooter was in his early 20s, did not have an extensive known criminal history and is believed to have acted alone, but did not release the name or information on possible connections to the school. A law enforcement official told The Associated Press authorities have identified the shooter as Robin Westman. That official was not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity.

“This was a deliberate act of violence against innocent children and other people worshipping. The sheer cruelty and cowardice of firing into a church full of children is absolutely incomprehensible,” the police chief said as church bells rang out. He noted that a wooden plank was placed to barricade some of the side doors, and that authorities found a smoke bomb but no explosives at the scene.

The police chief said officers immediately responded to reports of the shooting, entered the church, rendered first aid and rescued some of the children hiding throughout the building as other emergency responders arrived.

The school was evacuated, and students’ families later were directed to a “reunification zone” there. Outside, amid a heavy uniformed law enforcement presence, children in dark green uniforms trickled out of the school with adults, giving lingering hugs and wiping away tears.

The shooter has been identified as Robin Westman, a biological male who identified as a female. In a YouTube video posted by Westman before the shooting, he expressed his desire to die, and showed off his guns – which had on them scrawled the names of previous mass shooters and one that said, “Kill Donald Trump.”

And in a manifesto, Westman discussed his desire to murder “filthy Zionist Jews” and wrote slogans such as “Free Palestine.”

“If I will carry out a racially motivated attack, it would be most likely against filthy Zionist jews,” he wrote in one stomach-churning entry.

“I hate those entitled, penny-sniffing kikes,” he wrote elsewhere in the journal.

Westman also wrote that “six million wasn’t enough” and mused about killing President Trump and Jews, but settled on killing “children of innocent civilians,” which he wrote would bring him “the most joy.”

“I don’t want to [do] it to spread a message. I do it to please myself. I do it because I am sick,” he wrote.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)