U.S. President Barack Obama on Wednesday said he was "shocked and saddened" by a fatal shooting attack at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in downtown Washington earlier in the day.
"This outrageous act reminds us that we must remain vigilant against anti-Semitism and prejudice in all its forms," Obama said at the White House, just blocks away from the museum.
The suspect in the attack, an elderly white supremacist, opened fire with a rifle inside the crowded building early Wednesday afternoon, fatally wounding a security guard before being shot himself by other officers.
Obama added: "No American institution is more important to this effort than the Holocaust Museum, and no act of violence will diminish our determination to honor those who were lost by building a more peaceful and tolerant world."
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters earlier he gave Obama the facts as they were known at the time, shortly after shots were fired early Wednesday afternoon. The White House is receiving regular updates from the FBI, Homeland Security Council and the Situation Room, said Gibbs.
The Embassy of Israel release a statement following the incident saying it was "shocked and saddened by today's shooting incident at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. The Embassy of Israel condemns this attack and is closely following the situation."
Rabbi Eric Yoffie, President of the Union for Reform Judaism, issued the following statement:
"That today's shooting at the United States Holocaust Museum should take place at a site expressly created to teach the world about the destruction and devastation brought about by human evil deepens the resonance of this terrible act."
Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty called the attack "an extremely isolated incident."
"In these days and times you never know when someone is going to grab a gun and use it in an inappropriate way as was done today," he said.
James Von Brunn, an 89-year-old white supremacist linked to an anti-Semitic Web site, has been named as the gunman. He was hospitalized in critical condition after guards returned fire on him and police were investigating his home.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center later said the attack was a warning that anti-Semitism was a real threat in the U.S.
"The murderous attack that took place at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington by James von Brunn, a self-identified anti-Semite, white supremacist, and hater of African-Americans shows that the cancer of hatred, bigotry and anti-Semitism is alive and well in America," said Rabbis Marvin Hier and Abraham Cooper, founder and dean and associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
The Canadian Jewish Congress also voiced sadness in response to the shooting.
"The Holocaust Memorial bears witness to the world about the atrocities and mass murders committed during the Shoah," said the congress' President Mark Freiman.
"To bring the tools of violence and to mount an attack in such a place, dishonors the memory of those who suffered and perished during that dark period in human history."
