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BLACKSBURG, Virginia  - Thirty-three people were killed and 15 others were wounded at Virginia Tech university on Monday in the deadliest campus shooting rampage in U.S. history.

The dead included one suspected gunman, the university president, Charles Steger, told reporters.

The rampage took place in two separate areas, first at a dormitory as students had begun criss-crossing the sprawling campus for morning classes, and then about two hours later at an engineering and science hall a half-mile away.

The attacks sparked panic and chaos.

The 15 wounded included people shot and those hurt jumping from windows to escape the gunfire, Virginia Tech campus police chief Wendell Flinchum said.

Flinchum said the suspected gunman killed himself during the rampage.

"All I can tell you is that he's a male," Flinchum said, giving no details of his age or nationality. He also did not say how well-armed the suspected gunman was.

"We have not confirmed the identity of the gunman because he carried no identification on his person and we are in the process of attempting that identification," Steger said.

Students told CNN there were multiple bomb threats to the campus in the last few weeks. Two of the threats were aimed at the university's science and engineering school.

A U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesman said there was no indication of terrorism but that it would be part of the investigation.

Student Tiffany Otay will long remember the chilling sense of dread she felt as she huddled with classmates in a room at Virginia Tech University while a gunman stalked the hallways below.

"I guess everybody was like freaking out, hysterical," Ms Otay told CNN after a gunman, apparently acting alone, struck down 32 other people before dying himself in the worst school shooting rampage in US history.

"At one point we heard screaming because people were running out of the building and at this point, we were all kind of frightened," Otay said. "Who knows if the shooter was going to come up to the next floor?"

Blood, confusion and panic filled the campus of the venerable southern university on a blustery spring morning as the gunman first opened fire in a dormitory than re-surfaced two hours later in an engineering studies hall.

"This is an emergency. This is an emergency. Take shelter indoors immediately. Stay away from windows and remain inside," loudspeakers blared across the 2,600-acre campus, which had been closed off.

A student journalist's video of the chaos at Virginia Tech, a state university, was replayed repeatedly on U.S. television networks.

It showed people scurrying around the campus and more than two dozen shots ringing out.

The death toll was worse than a massacre at the University of Texas in Austin on August 1, 1966, when Charles Whitman, a 25-year-old student, killed 13 people and wounded 31 in a 90-minute spree. Whitman had killed his mother and wife the night before.

TWO HOURS BETWEEN ATTACKS

The first shooting at Virginia Tech was reported to campus police at about 7:15 a.m. in West Ambler Johnston Hall, a dormitory housing some 900 students.

It was followed by more shooting at Norris Hall, site of the science and engineering school that has given the university much of its fame as a leading technical institute in the United States.

During the two hours after the first shooting some students had ventured out again. University police were investigating the first shooting at the dormitory when they got word of gunfire at the classroom building.

Student Justin Merrifield told Reuters he was outside West Ambler dormitory at 9 a.m. when he saw police and a crying student but did not realize the magnitude of the crisis until he arrived at his 10 a.m. class.

Merrifield said students were alerted by campus loudspeakers.

"There was a voice that just kept repeating, 'Gunman on campus, stay indoors, get away from windows,' over and over, basically," said Merrifield.

Steger, facing a barrage of questions over the university's initial response, stressed that its efforts to alert students could not possibly reach the thousands of people moving around the campus at the start of the school day.

"We had no reason to suspect any other incident was going to occur," Steger said of the first shooting.

One student criticized how university officials reacted.

"I'm pretty outraged that someone died in a shooting in a dorm at 7 O'clock in the morning and the first e-mail about it had no mention of locking down the campus, no mention of canceling classes," Jason Piatt told CNN.

"They just mentioned that they were investigating a shooting," he said. "That's pretty ridiculous. Meanwhile, while they sent out that e-mail, 21 people got killed."

The shooting was bound to revive debate in the United States about gun violence.

"We live in a society where guns are pretty well accepted," said Jim Sollo, of Virginians Against Handgun Violence. "There are 200 million guns in this society and obviously some in the wrong hands."

Virginia Tech, with 26,000 students and some 100 buildings on 2,600 acres, is located in the town of Blacksburg and set in lush rolling hills in the southwest corner of the state, about 240 miles from Washington.

Classes were canceled for Monday and Tuesday and counselors were being brought in to talk to the students.