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On Thursday a psychiatrist from U.S Army opened fire with two handguns at the Fort Hood Army post, killing 12 and wounding 31 others, Army officials said.

It was previously believed that the suspect was Killed but according to the army official, the suspect is still alive.

The man was identified as Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, a 39-year-old from Virginia.

The suspect who is a psychiatrist in U.S Army had earlier treated soldiers wounded in foreign wars preparing for foreign deployment at the post.

"Our investigation is ongoing but preliminary reports indicate that there was a single shooter," Lieutenant-General Robert Cone, Fort Hood's commanding officer, told a news conference. "The shooter is not dead but in custody in stable condition."

US President Barack Obama called the shooting at the Soldier Readiness Center, where soldiers who are about to be deployed or who are returning undergo medical screening, “a horrific outburst of violence.”

“It's difficult enough when we lose these brave Americans in battles overseas,'' the commander in chief said. ``It is horrifying that they should come under fire at an Army base on American soil.''

Fort Hood is home to about 50,000 troops, although Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison said only about 35,000 were on base at the time. The fort, established in 1942, stretches across 339 square miles (878 square km) in central Texas and is the largest single employer in Texas.

Hasan, whose family said he was born in suburban Washington, is single with no children. He graduated from Virginia Tech, where he was a member of the Reserve Officer Training Corps and earned a bachelor's degree in biochemistry in 1997. He received his medical degree from the military's Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland, in 2001 and was at Walter Reed for six years for his internship, residency and a fellowship.

The attack happened just down the road from one of the worst mass shootings in US history. On Oct. 16, 1991, George Hennard smashed his pickup truck through a Luby's Cafeteria window in Killeen, Texas, and fired on the lunchtime crowd with a high-powered pistol, killing 22 people and wounding at least 20 others.

The incident raised new questions about the toll that six years of continuous fighting in Iraq and nearly eight years of fighting in Afghanistan have taken on the U.S. military and on individual soldiers, many of whom have been on several combat tours.