United States President Barack Obama on Thursday did not rule out the California shooting as a terrorist act even as he maintained that investigators are yet to find a cause, reported PTI. Fourteen people were killed and 17 injured in the San Bernardino city of California in a mass shooting on Wednesday. Two of the suspects were shot dead by the police in a gunfight hours later. One other suspect has been apprehended. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is carrying out the investigation. Investigators say that the gunman, Syed Rizwan Farook, had been in contact with Islamic extremists on social media, but that the killers were not under FBI scrutiny before the shooting.

After meeting with his national security team, Obama said, “At this stage we do not know why this terrible event occurred. It is possible this was terrorist-related, but it’s also possible this was workplace-related.” He assured the American people that the authorities will get to the bottom of the incident before issuing any decisive judgments about how it occurred. “We need ourselves as a society to make sure that we take some basic steps that make it harder – not impossible – but harder for individuals to get access to weapons,” said the president.