On Thursday, one of the most secure army bases in the United States, Fort Hood, Texas became the scene of carnage and an unprecedented killing spree, when a U.S Army psychiatrist, Major Nidal Malik Hasan opened fire with his assault rifle and went into a frenzy of indiscriminate killing. The incident claimed the lives of 12 people on the base and injured 31 others. Despite being repeatedly shot by the base security, the Major survived and continued this rampage.

Major Nidal Malik Hasan, who was serving as the base psychiatrist, was scheduled to be deployed for overseas tour of duty. However, he was reluctant of going to Iraq for overseas deployment and apparently had a mental breakdown. Mr. Hasan is the son of Palestinian immigrants and had complained to his relatives that, his comrades harassed him with racist remarks, as he is a Muslim. As he was relegated to the soldiers who were suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after their tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, Major Hasan was terrified of being deployed to either of the war zones.

Accroding to a cousin of the accused, Nader Hasan,

“He was doing everything he could to avoid that (overseas deployment). He wanted to do whatever he could within the rules to make sure he wouldn’t go over. He was mortified by the idea of having to deploy. He had people telling him on a daily basis the horrors they saw over there.”

Major Hasan had dropped out of high school and joined the U.S army soon after. There he complete his education and received an undergraduate degree at Virginia Tech and a medical degree at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland. Fort Hood is one the largest army bases in the world, accommodating more than 50,000 soldiers and their families with an estimated 878 square km area designated to the facility.

Via Reuters.