Some interesting facts to know about the military base in Texas:
Covering 339 square miles, Fort Hood is the largest active duty armored post in the United States.
It is home to about 52,000 troops as of earlier this year.
At the Soldier Readiness Center, soldiers who are about to be deployed or who are returning undergo medical screening.
The base is home to nine schools, and all were on lockdown.
An Army psychiatrist who had treated soldiers wounded in foreign wars opened fire with two handguns on soldiers preparing for foreign deployment at the Fort Hood U.S. Army post in Texas on Thursday, killing 12 and wounding 30 others.
U.S. officials identified the gunman, who was wounded, as Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan. A cousin of the shooter, Nader Hasan, told Fox News that he had been ordered to serve a term in Iraq and had been resisting such a deployment.
“We’ve known over the last five years that was probably his worst nightmare,” he said.
The Army said the gunman was shot by base police, but contrary to early reports, the gunman was not killed.
Nader Hasan said his cousin is a U.S.-born Muslim who had joined the military from high school. He was a psychiatrist at Walter Reed dealing with the people coming back from combat.
It was one of the worst killings ever reported on a U.S. base and raised new questions about the toll years of war have taken on the military.