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A gunman who shot seven people dead at a religious school in California told students: 'Get in line and I'm going to kill you all.'

The alleged killer, named yesterday as 43-year-old One L. Goh, then stood up in the middle of a nursing lecture and started calmly spraying bullets randomly at his classmates, it was revealed last night.

'He stood up and began shooting,' said Oakland Police Chief Howard Jordan. But after stalking out of the classroom, the bloodshed wasn't over.

About 35 students were said to be in the single-story college at the time. Five died at the scene and two others were pronounced dead after being rushed to hospital.

It was an 'unprecedented tragedy, shocking and senseless,' Mr Jordan said at a press conference. 'No words can express the gravity of this incident.'

Goh is not thought to have a criminal record. He gave himself up to a shop security guard after the killings after admitting to 'shooting some people.'

'Shots were fired throughout the building,' Mr Jordan added.

Police said the Korean-American suspect fired indiscriminately in a morning acupuncture class at Oikos University, a small private college in Oakland, California, which provides fellow Koreans with Christian-based training in theology, music, nursing and Asian medicine.

He was arrested about an hour later in a Safeway shopping centre car park several miles away from Oikos University, a Korean Christian school in Oakland, California.

Goh apparently handed himself in and told a security guard he had shot several people.

The shooter was said to be a former nursing student who had been absent from class for months. It was unclear whether he was expelled or had dropped out.

Police said they were still investigating the exact motive for the attack. But one officer said: 'He clearly had some kind of grudge against the school.'

Police first received an emergency call at 10.33am (5.33pm GMT) yesterday reporting a woman on the ground bleeding.

As more calls came in from the school, the first arriving officer found a victim suffering from a life-threatening gunshot wound, he said.

More officers arrived and formed a perimeter around the school in the belief that the suspect was still inside, he said.

SWAT teams surrounded the building, smashing glass with sledgehammers before rushing inside only to find the gunman had fled.

Mr Jordan said potential victims remained inside the building trapped by a locked door which officers were unable to open. Others were unable to flee because they were injured, he said.

Paul Singh, whose sister was one of three students wounded, said the gunman threatened he was going to kill everyone in the class.

'She told me that a guy went crazy and she got shot,' her brother Paul Singh told the Oakland Tribune. 'She was running, she was crying, she was bleeding. It was wrong.'

One of the victims was named as Tshering Rinzing Bhutia, 38, an immigrant from the Himalayas who was studying nursing and working part-time as a janitor.