Virginia Tech police Tuesday morning identified the gunman who killed 32 people Monday at the university as Cho Seung-Hui, a 23-year-old South Korean senior majoring in English.

Cho, who is thought to have killed 29 people and himself at the end of the shooting rampage at the Norris Hall of the university, was a South Korean national and resident alien from Centreville, Va., about 50 km west of Washington D.C. in Fairfax County, and adjacent to Dulles Airport and the Manassas Civil War battlefields.

Police said at least one of the two pistols found with Cho's body was also used in the killings of a man and a woman, also both undergraduates, in the West Ambler Johnston residence hall two hours before the killings at the Norris Hall.

"It's certainly reasonable to assume that Cho was the shooter in both cases," said Col. Steve Flaherty, superintendent of the Virginia State Police.

Flaherty stressed that authorities had not firmly established the links between the two incidents.

Cho himself was a resident of Harper Hall, another on-campus residence hall.

A South Korean foreign ministry official in Seoul said Cho had emigrated to the U.S. in 1992, when he would have been about 8 years old.

The official, Cho Byung-se, no presumed relation, said the foreign ministry wished to express its condolences to the families of the victims and that it was "in shock beyond description."

He added that he hoped the incident would not "stir up racial prejudice or confrontation."

The Yonhap news agency reported that South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun Tuesday delivered his condolences to the families of the Virginia Tech shooting victims.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Cho was a legal permanent resident -- in other words, a "green card" holder -- who had lived in the U.S. for several years.

ABC News cited unnamed sources as saying Cho returned to his own dorm room after the initial shootings, where he re-armed himself and took the time to write a "disturbing note" before heading to Norris Hall.

Survivors of the Norris Hall rampage had described the gunman as a tall Asian male who seemed eerily calm as he methodically killed students and instructors in the engineering building.

A law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the information had not been announced, said Cho was carrying a backpack that contained receipts for a March purchase of a Glock 9 mm pistol.

"He was a loner, and we're having difficulty finding information about him," school spokesman Larry Hincker said.

Two law enforcement officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because the information had not been announced, said Cho's fingerprints were found on the guns used in both shootings.

The serial numbers on the two weapons had been filed off, the officials said.

Source: Xinhua