On June 12, 2016, a terrorist attack consisting of a mass shooting occurred at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, United States. Forty-nine people were murdered and fifty others were wounded inside the nightclub by a gunman before he was killed by police after a three-hour siege. The attack was the deadliest mass shooting by a single gunman in U.S. history, the deadliest incident of violence against LGBT people in U.S. history, and the deadliest terrorist attack in the U.S. since the September 11 attacks of 2001.
The assailant was identified as 29-year-old Omar Mateen, an American born to parents of Afghan background. During the attack, he swore allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Investigators have not formally linked him to ISIL, and cautioned that the attack may have been ISIL-inspired without being ISIL-directed. Witnesses said that Mateen was a regular patron of the nightclub, and some said that they had contact with him via gay dating apps in the past.
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