A gunman burst into a Planned Parenthood clinic and opened fire, launching several gunbattles and an hours-long standoff with police as patients and staff took cover under furniture and inside locked rooms.

By the time the shooter surrendered, three people were killed '€” including a police officer '€” and nine others were wounded, authorities said.

For hours, police had no communication with the shooter, who fired intermittently from inside the Colorado Springs clinic. As the standoff progressed, officers inside the building herded people into one area and evacuated others.

Officers eventually moved in, shouted at the gunman and persuaded him to surrender, police said. About five hours after the attack started, authorities led away a man wearing a white T-shirt.

A law enforcement official identified the gunman as Robert Lewis Dear of North Carolina. The official, who had direct knowledge of the case, was not authorized to speak to the media about the ongoing investigation and spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity. Dear is 57 years old, according to jail booking records.

No other details about the gunman were immediately available, including whether he had any connection to Planned Parenthood.

"We don't have any information on this individual's mentality, or his ideas or ideology," Colorado Springs police Lt. Catherine Buckley told reporters.

Planned Parenthood said all of its staff at the clinic was safe. The organization said it did not know the circumstances or motives behind the attack or whether the organization was the target.

The slain police officer was 44-year-old Garrett Swasey, who was married and had a son and daughter. There were no immediate details about the two civilians killed in the attack.

Five officers and four others were hospitalized in good condition, police said.

Witnesses described a chaotic scene when the shooting first started just before noon.

Ozy Licano was in the two-story building's parking lot when he saw someone crawling toward the clinic's door. He tried to escape in his car when the gunman looked at him.

"He came out, and we looked each other in the eye, and he started aiming, and then he started shooting," Licano said. "I saw two holes go right through my windshield as I was trying to quickly back up and he just kept shooting and I started bleeding."

Licano drove away and took refuge at a nearby grocery store.

Inside the clinic, terrified patients and staff hid wherever they could find cover. Jennifer Motolinia ducked under a table and called her brother, Joan, to leave instructions for the care of her three children in case the gunman found her.

Joan Motolinia said he could hear gunshots in the background as his sister spoke. "She was telling me to take care of her babies because she could get killed," he said. (bbn)

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