A spokesman for the Philadelphia police department confirmed to Reuters by email there were “multiple gunshot victims” but said no further details were immediately available.

Around 8:40pm, roughly 10 minutes after shots rang out, police officers reported they had apprehended a male suspect wearing a ballistic vest and had recovered a rifle and handgun in a nearby alleyway, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Both the Inquirer and Philadelphia television WPVI, an ABC News affiliate, reported two of the people shot were juveniles, but it was not clear whether they were among the dead.

Details of the July Fourth-eve gun violence were sketchy, but the shooting was reported to have erupted in the Kingsessing section of southwest Philadelphia, less than a 1.5km from the Schuykill River that flows through Pennsylvania’s most populous city.

WPVI video footage from the scene of the shooting showed several police squad cars parked near an intersection, lights flashing in the darkness, with portions of the street cordoned off with yellow and red crime-scene tape.

The shooting came a day after two people were shot dead and 28 others injured, about half of them children, in a hail of gunfire at an outdoor neighbourhood block party in Baltimore, Maryland. Police said they were still seeking multiple suspects in that shooting.