This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

At least 11 people were killed and 50 were wounded in shootings over the Christmas weekend in Chicago, where this year’s homicide rate is the highest it has been since the 1990s.

More than 753 homicides have occurred in Chicago this year, including seven people who were killed on Christmas Day. More people were fatally shot in Chicago this Christmas than had been killed in the three previous years’ holidays combined.

Gun violence, unsolved murders put Chicago on course to set grim record Read more

Chicago police superintendent Eddie Johnson said on Monday that most of the holiday weekend violence occurred in areas with gang conflicts.

“These were deliberate and planned shootings by one gang against another,” Johnson said. “They were targeted knowing fully well that individuals would be at the homes of family and friends celebrating the holidays. This was followed by several acts of retaliation.”

Chicago police said that there were 753 homicides and 3,495 shootings from 1 January to 25 December. The same period in 2015 saw 478 homicides and 2,393 shootings.

Experts said that this year’s soaring violence is tied to cuts in social services, unemployment, distrust of police and an overworked, understaffed police force.

From Friday afternoon through Tuesday morning, at least 61 people were shot.

Megan Crepeau (@crepeau) Christmas weekend shootings, Friday afternoon to early Tuesday. #chicago pic.twitter.com/mJw0KtalsD

Eight of the weekend shootings had multiple victims, including an attack on the city’s south side where a man opened fire on a group of people celebrating on a porch. Two brothers, aged 18 and 21, died and five others were wounded.

Chicago police have a computerized algorithm to rate how likely people are to be victims of gun violence or commit acts of gun violence, based on their arrest records and known affiliations.

Anthony Guglielmi, a spokesman for the Chicago police department, told the Chicago Tribune that 90% of those fatally wounded were in this algorithm.

“While we have promising leads, this unacceptable level of gun violence demonstrates the clear and present need for policymakers to convene in January and give Chicago the gun sentencing tools against repeat offenders so that we can adequately hold people accountable,” Guglielmi said.

Though the nationwide crime rate has been stagnant for several years, Chicago is driving an increase of the homicide rate in the country’s 30 largest cities, which is expected to grow by 14% this year, according to an analysis published by the Brennan Center earlier this month.

The center had predicted 732 people would be murdered in Chicago by the end of the year. The Chicago Tribune, which monitors citywide homicides using a different definition, said on Tuesday morning 768 people had been killed in 2016.