AMERICA has been rocked by another mass shooting incident, this time in Chicago.

Thirteen people were shot at a basketball court, including a three-year-old boy and two 15 year olds. Chicago Fire Department officials said the child was in critical condition. CNN quoted Chicago Police officer Ron Gaines as saying the child was shot in the ear with the bullett exiting through his mouth. The 15 year olds are in a stable condition, Gaines said, while four other victims were in a serious condition. The incident took place on Chicago's south side, in the Back of the Yards neighbourhood. The Chicago Tribune reported that up to 60 police arrived on the scene after the incident. All the victims were transported to hospitals but are alive, deputy fire chief James Mungovan said. Police do not yet have anyone in custody. A Chicago police spokesman did not confirm how many were shot in the park. He added it wasn't known if there were fatalities. A total of 10 ambulances responded to the scene near Cornell Square Park around 10:15 p.m. local time and transported 11 of the victims to various hospitals, fire officials said. A police dispatcher told AFP: "Basically, there have been no fatalities reported and there is no one in custody at this time." The Chicago Sun Times quoted 22-year-old local resident Julian Harris as saying that "dreadlocked gunmen in a gray sedan" fired at him at the corner of Wood and 51st street. "They've been coming round here looking for people to shoot every night - just gang-banging stuff. It's what they do," the paper quoted Harris saying. Another witness told the paper that he heard "at least 20 shots" and police arrived on the scene "real quick". A third witness at the scene said three police officers carried the child to an ambulance. "I didn't hear no sounds,'' from the child, he told the Chicago Tribune. Francis John, 70, said she was in her apartment when the shooting occurred. She told Associated Press she went down to see what was going on and "a lot of youngsters were running scared.'' She said she was surprised by what had happened, saying she has lived in the neighborhood for 30 years. The shooting comes as Chicago struggles to stem an epidemic of gang violence that helped push the city's murder rate up 16 percent to 506 people last year. The Chicago Tribune reported that a total of eighteen people, including the 13 in the Cornell Park incident, were shot in the space of four hours in Chicago on Thursday night. Despite this shocking figure, there has only been one fatality so far, that of a 36-year-old man who was shot near 77th Street and Sangamon Avenue. Back of the Yards is an industrial and residential neighborhood on Chicago's South Side and gets its name from the former Union Stock Yards, which employed thousands of European immigrants in the early 20th century. It is still considered to be a working-class area, though now with a strong Mexican-American ethnic base, and suffers from a relatively high crime rate. The incident comes four days after 12 people were killed in a mass shooting at Washington Navy Yard. President Barack Obama returned to his adopted hometown earlier this year to appeal for an end to the 'senseless' gun violence ravaging Chicago as he pressed for ambitious gun control measures, which so far have been stalled in the US Congress. ###