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Ammon News - Three black people have been killed in a "racially motivated" shooting in Florida.

Two men and one woman were shot dead in a Dollar General store in Jacksonville by a man in his early 20s in what the mayor has called a "hate-filled crime".

Jacksonville's sheriff said the suspect, an unidentified white man in his 20s, "targeted black people" in the shooting before killing himself.

"Plainly put, this shooting was racially motivated and he hated black people," Sheriff T K Waters said at a news conference.

The gunman reportedly left several manifestos littered with racial epithets detailing his hatred of black people.

Numerous police officers were in the area near Edward Waters University, a small historically black university.

Sherri Onks, the special agent in charge of the Jacksonville FBI office, said federal officials had opened a civil rights investigation and would pursue the incident as a hate crime.

"Hate crimes are always and will always remain a top priority for the FBI because they are not only an attack on a victim, they're also meant to threaten and intimidate an entire community," Ms Onks said.

Edward Waters University students were being kept in their dorms, the school said in a statement.

No students or faculty are believed involved, the school said.

The shooting happened five years to the day when a gunman opened fire during a video game tournament in Jacksonville, killing two people before fatally shooting himself.

President Joe Biden has been briefed on the incident, the White House said.

Sky News