by Our Foreign Desk

US POLICE arrested a suspect in Shelby, North Carolina, yesterday over Wednesday night’s massacre at a majority-black church in Charleston, South Carolina.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch confirmed that a suspect was in custody, but did not give any further details.

The man is believed to be 21-year-old Lexington residents Dylann Roof (sic), whom Charleston Police had earlier identified as the young white man captured on security cameras.

A photo from Mr Roof’s Facebook page shows him wearing a jacket bearing the flags of apartheid-era South Africa and the former white colonial state of Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe.

Police, FBI investigators and Charleston Mayor Joseph Riley are treating the massacre as a hate crime.

Mr Riley called the shooting an unfathomable and unspeakable act by somebody filled with hate and with a deranged mind.

“Of all cities, in Charleston, to have a horrible hateful person go into the church and kill people there to pray and worship with each other is something that is beyond any comprehension and is not explained,” the mayor said.

“We are going to put our arms around that church and that church family.”

National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People president Cornell William Brooks condemned the shooting.

“There is no greater coward than a criminal who enters a house of God and slaughters innocent people engaged in the study of scripture,” Mr Brooks said.

The gunman stayed for nearly an hour at a prayer meeting at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston on Wednesday night before shooting the six female and three male victims.

Pastor and state Senator Clementa Pinckney was among those killed, state Representative Todd Rutherford said.

Mr Pinckney was a married father of two who was elected to the state House of Representatives at 23, making him the youngest member of the House at the time.

“He never had anything bad to say about anybody, even when I thought he should,” Mr Rutherford said.

“He was always out doing work either for his parishioners or his constituents. He touched everybody.”

The attack came two months after the fatal shooting of an unarmed black man, Walter Scott, by a white police officer in neighbouring North Charleston, which sparked mass protests.