Investigators are seen outside the American Civic Association building where a gunman killed 13 people in Binghamton, New York. (Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images)
It said 26 people were wounded in the incident and others were believed to have been held hostage.
A police special weapons and tactics team was on the scene and there are reports that the shooter had killed himself. Binghamton Mayor Matthew Ryan, who was at the scene, said the shooter had a high-powered rifle, the Press & Sun-Bulletin said.
"About 15 or so employees of the Civic Association came out crying with their hands behind their heads and they were escorted by the police and they took them to ambulances and took them away," a witness told WNBF radio. "Quite a few people got out but I hear there's more (inside)," she said.
Television coverage showed police armed with rifles, some carrying shields, deployed around the building. Police closed surrounding streets and locked down a high school, WBNG said.
As many as 41 people were inside the building when a man entered and started shooting, WBNG said, citing police scanners. It said some fled to a basement and more than a dozen were hiding in a closet, adding that emergency dispatchers had been in contact with people inside.
The American Civic Association building is used to teach English and provide other services to recently immigrants to the United States who are preparing for U.S. citizenship.
Bob Joseph, the news director for WNBF radio, said in an interview with CNN that his sources described the shooter as an Asian man in his 20s, and that the shooter may have blocked the rear entrance to the building with a parked car.
Authorities requested a Vietnamese translator to speak with the shooter, according to the witness interviewed by WNFB.
Binghamton is about 150 miles (240 km) northwest of New York City with a population of about 45,000.
Last month, a man killed 10 people, many of them family members, in a shooting rampage in Alabama.
Mass shootings have become more frequent in recent years in the United States, where guns are widely available for purchase and the right to own weapons for self defense and hunting is defended by many.
On April 16, 2007, Virginia Tech, a university in Blacksburg, Virginia, became the site of the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history when a student gunman killed 32 people and himself.
