They say the shooter, there was a shooter who was on an elevated position outside the farm show ground where the rally was taking place.

That tallies with what our eyewitnesses have been telling us.

They say that two people are dead.

One is the shooter.

One is someone who was inside the crowd.

And two other people are now critically injured and presumably in hospital.

President Trump has also said that he was hit by a bullet.

He says it tore through the skin of the upper part of his right ear.

And if you just think about that for a moment, that means it is inches, I mean an inch away from going in his head.

So that is how close the former president came this evening to getting a bullet in the head.

So this is incredibly shocking developments, incredibly shocking news here on the ground.

President Trump has also extended his condolences to those people who have been injured and died.

He's also thanked law enforcement for their rapid action.

And you can see from the video that they order him to the ground as soon as the shooting starts and then they pile on top, which is what they're trained and paid to do, to put their bodies between him and the bullets.

That's what they do.

And then they took him away.

We're hearing from his campaign, of course, that he's fine.

His sons have been on social media as well saying Donald Trump Jr. has spoken to his father, says he's fine.

Eric Trump has talked on social media as well.

I have to say to you that about half an hour ago, just on the perimeter here, there was an electronic billboard on the back of a truck that had been parked and it had a picture of Donald Trump's face on it with a target.

And it said in terms Democrats assassinating Donald Trump, trying to assassinate Donald

Trump.

So that's a pretty shocking development and it's an indication perhaps of what may be to come in terms of the divisions this may deepen in this country.

There is a chance, of course, that this is the kind of thing that will make people stop and think about the political atmosphere and the dialogue in America, but there's a chance that it can make it a whole lot worse.

Well, it's been a charged atmosphere for many months and years, really, hasn't it, Gary?

Of course, you covered the events of January 6th, and this is something that may have been bubbling under the surface for a long time.

Just speaking of those kinds of tensions that you've been mentioning, I just want to flash back, though, because you were there outside the events.

When you heard those shots, you spoke to people that were obviously inside.

Can you just walk us through and kind of help us understand what those moments were like?

Well, we were standing just a few feet from where I am now, and we were talking to our colleagues on the BBC World Service, and suddenly we heard this volley of gunfire, and it was immediately obvious that that's what it was, that it was gunfire.

It wasn't a car backfiring or a motorcycle or anything like that, and we got down on the ground.

We had no idea where these bullets were going or where they were coming from or who was being shot at.

There's no cover here.

It's just like fields.

There's nowhere to go, really, so we're flat on the dirt, and then people started streaming out of there.

You heard screaming happening, and we started to speak to people as they came out, and we spoke to a number of people.

Some were very emotional.

Some were very angry.

One guy, in fact, here on BBC News tried to stop us telling you what was happening, telling the world what was happening, and we had to try and explain to him live on air that this is what we do.

This is what we try and do.

We try and explain the world to people in the best way we possibly can.

We had another eyewitness who said that he had been just outside the perimeter, and he had come down after a party with some friends to listen to the rally.

They didn't have tickets or anything, and he'd seen a guy climbing onto this single-story building, which is to the right of the stage, as Donald Trump was on it.

It has a white roof, and he said he saw this guy climb onto this roof with a rifle and tried to point this out to the security service, the Secret Service, the police.

He said he was doing this for a couple of minutes or so.

He wasn't absolutely sure about timings, but he thought this was happening about five or seven minutes into the speech.

And then a few minutes later, the shooting started.

And in very graphic terms, he told us about how he'd seen the man on the roof with the rifle, how he'd seen him shot or neutralized, as the security service liked to call it here.

So it all happened incredibly quickly.

And you can hear on that video, you can hear there are kind of two bursts of gunfire, in fact.

And, you know, there's clearly an initial burst and probably an exchange of fire there.

And certainly another one of the eyewitnesses we spoke to, young teenage boy Colby, he was here with his dad.

They own a farm just down the road, two miles down the road from here.

And he said he'd seen the flare from the muzzles of the rifles of the Secret Service people on the roofs around when they'd taken the gunman down.

And they had also seen a couple of people put on stretchers and taken away in ambulances as well.

So incredibly shocking moments.

That was their first rally.

That's their first political rally, this teenage boy coming to his first political rally, and he gets this.

And his father was shocked.

And I have to tell you, this is Trump country in this part of Pennsylvania, Butler County, very firmly Trump country.

People told us afterwards, they have, you know, they support gun ownership, they support gun rights.

But at least two or three of them said, we've got to think about what do we do about this, about people having guns and doing this.

Gary O'Donoghue, our senior North America correspondent, thank you again for all of your reporting.

I just want to bring in some new lines that we're getting here from our sources.

Now AFP, the news agency, reporting that one person has been killed, two people critically injured in that shooting.

We're also hearing from Reuters that the New York Police Department is increasing security at the Trump Tower.

That is Donald Trump's main building there in New York City.

We're also getting this from Reuters, and this is coming from a statement posted to

X, formerly Twitter, by the Secret Service saying this, that the Secret Service has neutralized the shooter who is now deceased.

A suspected shooter fired multiple shots.

That of course confirms with what we've been hearing from our, those eyewitnesses on the ground.

Multiple shots towards the stage from an elevated position outside of the rally.

U.S. Secret Service quickly responded with protective measures, and the former president is safe and being evaluated.

That is coming from the chief of communications for the Secret Service.

We are also getting that confirmation there.

One spectator killed, two spectators in critical condition.

The incident currently being under investigation by the Secret Service.

It is also now formally notified the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Let's go now to Tom Bateman.

He's been standing by with us all night.

Our State Department correspondent.

Tom, what's the latest that you're hearing?

Obviously, so many reactions coming in from politicians here in the U.S.

Yeah, of course.

An absolute flood of shock, of condemnation, of appeals, really, for calm and to state that, you know, there is no place for this kind of violence in the United States.

Many, many politicians from across the political divide saying that there's no place for political violence.

We've had sort of in the last 90 minutes or so, three former presidents themselves putting out statements about this, Barack Obama saying, absolutely no place for political violence in our democracy.

He said, although we don't yet know exactly what happened, we should all be relieved that former President Trump wasn't seriously hurt.

And he appealed, he said, we should use this moment to recommit ourselves to civility and respect in our politics.

Former President George W. Bush talking about the cowardly attack on the life of President

Trump.

He says, we commend the men and women of the Secret Service for their speedy response.

Of course, George W. Bush himself, whilst president, targeted by an attacker who tossed a grenade that didn't explode while he was in Tbilisi in Georgia back in 2005.

Bill Clinton, also another former president who also, during his time in office, subjected to violence.

That was when somebody shot at the White House in 1994, saying that violence has no place in America, especially in our political process.

Hillary and I are thankful that President Trump is safe, saying that they're heartbroken for all those affected by the attack at today's rally in Pennsylvania.

Tom Bateman, thank you so much for bringing us all of those reactions.

I want to come now back to the studio.

Christine Ruffini is here with us.

She's been doing reporting even from the studio.

I just want to talk a bit about the Secret Service response here.

We've heard from a former Secret Service agent.

We just heard that statement there.

What do you make of the way they're going about this now, and what might come next in terms of any kind of investigation?

And whether or not, you know, we've heard the word, you know, assassination thrown around.

And that's not something we can confirm.

But it's going to be kind of an important word to parse, isn't it?

Because that takes on just a whole different meaning once we're able to determine what was behind this and who was behind this apparent attack.

I don't think that's something you're going to hear from the Secret Service.

I think they're going to wait for another agency, maybe the FBI, maybe even the White

House to make that determination.

There's a couple things in the statement that stand out to me.

The first of all is the way they phrased it.

They said multiple shots fired towards the stage from an elevated position.

They didn't say assassination attempt.

They're just going to give you the facts of what happened, right?

Because at this point, the shooter is dead.

They're going to have questions about motive.

That's not something they're going to be able to find out right now.

The other thing is it says that the shots were fired from a location outside the venue.

That's not necessarily outside the perimeter.

And that's a question that I have.

Whether or not...

What's the difference then between the perimeter and the venue?

So the venue itself is the arena, the stadium, the field, the, you know, I've been to a Trump rally and what was an aluminum warehouse.

That's the venue.

But the perimeter, the security perimeter extends much further than that and usually includes any high position that could potentially be at risk for someone taking this kind of shot for this very reason.

So I would be curious to know if this place where this man allegedly fired this shot from was swept, was a place that the Secret Service had looked over and was allegedly secured within the venue perimeter, not just the actual, you know, stage and area where it's taking place.

The other thing you have to think about, and that's something we're going to be learning in the days and months to come as we learn the identities of these other victims, is when you take a shot at a president who is standing in front of a crowd of supporters, you're not just firing a shot at that president.

There is no way even the best shooter is going to fire at that distance and not potentially hit someone.

And we've seen the images, haven't we?

It was a packed area, thousands, maybe even tens of thousands of people there.

There was a potential, and we've heard that there have been people seriously injured.

And there's historical precedent for this.

You know, the president is not always the one who gets the most injured in these assassination attempts.

Just down the street here, when Hinckley tried to shoot Reagan at the Hilton, literally down the hill from where we're sitting, it was his press secretary who was catastrophically permanently injured from that shooting, whereas Reagan recovered fairly quickly.

So that's the other part of malice when any of these kinds of incidents is someone is not only going after a political figure, but they're going at it with complete disregard for, look at this picture, all those people who are standing around him at that venue.

And it sounds like people were very, very hurt in this incident.

And, Christina, it's also, I think, worth noting in that statement that we heard from

Donald Trump on his Truth Social account, he personally said that he was struck by a bullet, that he said he felt that bullet go through his ear.

He did.

And that's, you know, that's something, as I was texting with sources today, you know, it's always unfolding.

You never know exactly until the FBI gets in there what exactly happened.

There were concerns at one point it could have been glass.

It could have hit one of the teleprompters, and that could have been what hit him.

He himself says he was hit by a bullet.

And, you know, we'll see what the specifics of that were as this comes out in the next few days.

All right.

Christina Ruffini, former White House correspondent, here with me in the studio.

I just want to play for you now, and this is a statement that was given to Gary O'Donohue, our senior North America correspondent, who was there on the ground.

And this is, of course, a witness telling Gary the moment that he believes the Secret

Service took down the alleged shooter.

So we had a party here all day, you can see behind us at the Brinkels Farm and Greenhouse here.

We had a party.

And we all decided, hey, you know, when we hear Trump up there, we're going to walk up through the field, stand by the trees up there under the shade, and listen to the rally.

We couldn't see him, but we could hear him.

So we walked up, and probably five to seven minutes of Trump speaking, I'm estimating here, I have no idea, you know, but we noticed a guy crawling, you know, bear crawling up the roof of the building beside us, 50 feet away from us.