US army base gunman was 'nicest guy you'd meet'

Hasan, 39, an American citizen of Jordanian descent, was captured after he was shot four times by a woman police officer, following his shooting spree at the Fort Hood military base in San Antonio near Houston on Friday.

Media reports claimed that the Virginia-born Hasan was being deployed to Afghanistan, instead of Iraq, as reported earlier. He has been moved to the Brook Medical Army Centre in San Antonio and is in a stable condition.

Medical centre spokesman Dewey Mitchell could not provide details on the decision to transfer Hasan from an unnamed Central Texas hospital to the army's only 'level one' trauma centre in the US. Access to the Fort Hood base, the largest active duty military training post in US with 50,000 personnel and 150,000 family members and civilians, has been tightly controlled.

Extra guards have been posted at entry gates to military housing developments to block the media from entering the base.

The tragedy unfolded when Major Hasan walked into a soldier readiness centre at the base and opened fire, in the worst attack against the military by one of its own men, killing 12 soldiers and one defence department civilian.

While the motive for the attack, which also left 31 people injured, remains unclear, reports suggest there were some signs that Hasan, who had signed up with the army after high school despite objections from his parents, was troubled.

Investigators examined Hasan's computer, his home and his garbage on Friday to learn what motivated the suspect, who lay in a coma, to unleash a hail of bullets on fellow soldiers. Hospital officials said some of the wounded had extremely serious injuries and might not survive.

One of the suspect's cousins said that after the 9/11 attacks, Hasan, a devout Muslim, complained of feeling harassed by some service members for his religious background. He was reportedly a loner who socialised little with fellow officers. He also expressed strong views about the US' involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, and apparently did not want to be deployed to Afghanistan.

A neighbour who lived near Hasan's apartment said he was the 'nicest guy you'd want to meet'.

Hasan apparently got a bad performance review while working as counselor at the Walter Reed Army Medical Centre in Washington. Yet, the army promoted him to the rank of a major anyway, as it did with approximately 93 per cent of its captains last year.

Hasan, who had never been deployed to a war zone, could not have been experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder, said psychiatrists. But counseling traumatised soldiers can also be stressful, as can the prospect of being deployed into a war zone, they said.

The suspect's aunt Noel Hasan said his sessions with traumatised soldiers had taken a toll. She told the media that he met one man who was so badly burned "that his face had nearly melted. He told us how upsetting it was to him."

She alleged that he had faced harassment on the job because of his religion and wanted a discharge, while a co-worker told the media that he had expressed anger over the US war in Iraq and spoke of the need for Muslims to 'stand up and fight against the aggressor'.

In a statement, Hasan's family said that his actions were deplorable and did not reflect how the family was reared.