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Obama to attend Fort Hood memorial

US President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, will attend a memorial service in Fort Hood, Texas, on Tuesday for victims of a mass shooting. Skip related content

Thirteen people died in the mass shooting on Thursday at the sprawling army base. An Army psychiatrist trained to treat war wounded is suspected of the killings.

Major Nidal Malik Hasan, a Muslim born in the United States of immigrant parents, was shot four times by police. He was hospitalized and is in a stable condition.

Obama devoted his weekly radio address to the Fort Hood shootings, which he called "a crime against our nation."

"It is a crime that would have horrified us had its victims been Americans of any background. But it's all the more heartbreaking and all the more despicable because of the place where it occurred and the patriots who were its victims," Obama said.

Hasan, 39, had spent years counselling severely wounded soldiers at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, many of whom had lost limbs fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He was transferred to Fort Hood in April and was to have been deployed to Afghanistan, where the US military is engaged in an increasingly bloody war against Taliban and al Qaeda fighters.

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