(Reuters) - Police in Charleston, South Carolina said on Thursday the white gunman who opened fire in an historic African-American church, killing nine people, sat with the churchgoers for about an hour before the shooting.

Police Chief Greg Mullen told reporters that six females and three males were murdered in the shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church on Wednesday night, and that three people survived the attack.

Mullen added that the unidentified gunman remained on the loose and that officials had no information on a "specific location" where he was.

(Reporting by Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Editing by Bernadette Baum)