'Numerous' fatalities after shooting at Florida high school

PARKLAND, Fla., Feb 14 (Reuters) - A shooter opened fire in a Florida high school on Wednesday morning, killing multiple people and sending hundreds of panicked students fleeing into the streets while others huddled in classrooms as police hunted for the gunman.

Dozens of police swarmed Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, about 45 miles (72 km) north of Miami after the attack before they took the suspected shooter into custody Wednesday afternoon.

"There are numerous fatalities. It's a horrific situation," Broward Country Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie told reporters. He said the school district had gotten no warning of a potential shooter and that there was no evidence of more than one shooter.

"We have at least 14 victims," the Broward County sheriff's office said on Twitter. It did not make clear if that number included people who were wounded in addition to the dead.

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Students hid in classrooms until they were rescued by police in tactical gear, friends and family members said.

McKenzie Hartley, 19, who identified herself as the sister of a student at the school described the scene in a text message to Reuters: "She heard him shooting through the windows of classrooms and two students were shot."

Panicked parents checked on their children.

"It is just absolutely horrifying. I can't believe this is happening," Lissette Rozenblat, whose daughter goes to the school, told CNN. Her daughter called her to say she was safe but the student also told her mother she heard the cries of a person who was shot.

"She was very nervous. She said that she could hear the person who was shot crying out for help," she told CNN. "My daughter is safe and I am very grateful."

Live television showed dozens of students, weaving their way between law enforcement officers with heavy weapons and helmets, and large numbers of emergency vehicles including police cars, ambulances and fire trucks.

Florida Governor Rick Scott said on Twitter that had he had been in touch with local officials about the incident.

The shooting was the latest in a deadly series of attacks at U.S. schools. A 15-year-old gunman in January killed two students at a Benton, Kentucky, high school.

The school had recently held a meeting to discuss what to do in such an attack, Ryan Gott, a 15-year-old freshman told CNN.

"My prayers and condolences to the families of the victims of the terrible Florida shooting," U.S. President Donald Trump said on Twitter. "No child, teacher or anyone else should ever feel unsafe in an American school."

(Additional reporting by Dan Whitcomb and Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles, Letitia Stein in Detroit and Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas; Writing by Scott Malone; Editing by Tom Brown)