BLACKSBURG, Va. — An outburst of gunfire at a Virginia Tech dormitory, followed two hours later by a ruthless rampage at a classroom building, killed 32 students, faculty and staff and injured about 30 others Monday in the deadliest shooting attack in the nation's history.

The shooter, whose name was not released Monday night, carried two 9mm semiautomatic handguns and wore blue jeans, a blue jacket and a vest that carried additional ammunition, law enforcement officials and witnesses said. Witnesses described the shooter as a young man of Asian descent — a silent killer who was calm and showed no expression as he pursued and shot his victims. He killed himself as police closed in.

He had left two dead at the dormitory and 30 more at a science and engineering building, where he executed people taking and teaching classes and even shot at a custodian who was helping a victim. Witnesses described scenes of chaos and grief, with students jumping from windows to escape gunfire and others blocking their classroom doors to keep the gunman away.

Even before anyone knew who the gunman was or why he did what he did, the campus community in southwest Virginia began questioning whether most of the deaths could have been prevented. They wondered why the campus was not shut down after the first shooting, in which two people were killed.

The enormity of the event brought almost immediate expressions of condolences from President Bush, both houses of Congress and across the world.

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"I'm really at a loss for words to explain or to understand the carnage that has visited our campus," said Charles W. Steger, Virginia Tech's president.

The rampage began as much of the campus was just waking up. A man walked into a freshman coed dorm at 7:15 a.m. and fatally shot a young woman and a resident adviser.

Based on witness interviews, police believed it was an isolated domestic case and chose not to take any drastic security measures, university officials said. But about 9:45 a.m., a man entered a classroom building, chained some of the doors shut behind him, then started walking into classrooms and shooting faculty and students with the two handguns, causing some to leap out of second-story windows and others to lie on the floor and bar their doors to keep the shooter from entering. Virginia Tech Police Chief Wendell Flinchum said investigators were still not certain that the same man committed both shootings. But several law enforcement sources said it was the same person.

As police entered Norris Hall, an engineering and science building, shortly before 10 a.m., the man shot and killed himself before officers could confront him. He had killed 30 people in that building. One witness said the gunman was "around 19" and was "very serious but (with) a very calm look on his face." "He knew exactly what he was doing," the witness, Trey Perkins, 20, of Yorktown, Va., said. He said he watched the man enter his classroom and shoot Perkins' professor in the head. "I have no idea why he did what he decided to do. I just can't say how lucky I am to have made it." The university canceled classes Monday and today and set up counseling for the grief-stricken campus. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D), who had just arrived in Japan on a trade mission, immediately flew back to Virginia. He was expected to attend a vigil today.

"We've been devastated as the death toll has been rising," said Payton Baran, 20, of Bethesda, Md., who is a junior majoring in finance. "I've been calling everyone I know, and everyone I talk to is pretty much in tears. It's really, really depressing." None of the victims' names was released Monday, pending notification of their families.

Initial reports from the campus raised the specter of "another Columbine," in which two teenagers in Littleton, Colo., killed 13 people inside a high school in 1999 before killing themselves. But soon the Virginia Tech rampage dwarfed Columbine, to become the biggest mass shooting in U.S. history.

Students and parents launched a frenzied round of phone calls and text messages Monday morning, monitoring news reports and waiting for information. And the shootings prompted intense questioning of Steger and Flinchum from a community still reeling from the fatal shootings of a security guard and a sheriff's deputy near campus in August and the arrest of the suspect on the edge of campus on the first day of classes.

At an evening news conference, Flinchum refused to dismiss the possibility that a co-conspirator or second shooter was involved. He said police had interviewed a "person of interest" in the dorm shooting who knew one of the victims, but he declined to give details.

"I'm not saying there is someone out there, and I'm not saying there is someone who is not," Flinchum said. Ballistics tests will help explain what happened, he said.

Sheree Mixell, a spokeswoman for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said the evidence was being moved to the agency's national lab in Annandale. At least one firearm was turned over, she said.

Although the gunman in the dormitory was at large, no warning was issued to the tens of thousands of students and staff at Virginia Tech until 9:26 a.m., more than two hours later.

"We concluded it was domestic in nature," Flinchum said. "We had reason to believe the shooter had left campus and may have left the state." He declined to elaborate. But several law enforcement sources said investigators thought the shooter might have intended to kill a girl and her boyfriend Monday in what one of them described as a "lover's dispute." It was unclear whether the girl killed at the dorm was the intended target, they said.

Students who lived in the dorm said they received knocks on the door telling them to stay in their rooms but nothing else. Shortly before 9:30 a.m., the university sent out this e-mail: "A shooting incident occurred at West Amber Johnston (dorm) earlier this morning. Police are on the scene and are investigating.

"The university community is urged to be cautious and are asked to contact Virginia Tech Police if you observe anything suspicious or with information on the case." Steger said that, even though the gunman was at large, "we had no reason to suspect any other incident was going to occur." He said 9,000 students live on campus and 14,000 live off-campus, and "it's extremely difficult if not impossible to get the word out spontaneously." Students on campus and parents were angry. When Blake Harrison, 21, of Leesburg, Va., learned of the shootings, he said, called an administrative help line and was told "to proceed with caution to classes." He said: "I'm beyond upset. I'm enraged." Monday, as officials began to sort out the shootings, tales of the horror began to emerge.

Alec Calhoun, a junior, was in Room 204 in Norris. When the shootings began, people suddenly pulled off screens and pushed out windows. "Then people started jumping," Calhoun said. "I didn't just leap. I hung from the ledge and dropped. Anybody who made it out was fine. I fell and I hit a bush to cushion my fall. It knocked the wind out of me. I don't remember running."

Calhoun said that the two students behind him were shot, but that he believed they survived. Just before he climbed out the window, Calhoun said, he turned to look at the professor, who had stayed behind, perhaps to block the door.

The instructor was killed, he said.

About 9:50 a.m., Jamal Albarghouti was walking toward Norris Hall for a meeting with his adviser in civil engineering "to review my thesis. As I was walking, about 300 feet away, I started hearing people shouting, telling me to run or clear." He started to move away, but he also pulled out his cell phone, which has videorecording capability, and he began filming. His video, which he later shipped to CNN, captures officers running toward the brown three-story building, a couple of flashes from the second floor and 27 gunshots.

The video soon became the defining image of the rampage. "I just didn't think I was in great danger," Albarghouti said later.

In a German class in Room 207, Perkins was seated in the back with about 15 fellow students. The gunman barged in with two guns, shot the professor in the head, then started shooting students, Perkins said.

"Everyone hit the floor at that moment," Perkins said. "And the shots seemed like it lasted forever." The gunman left Room 207 and tried to return several minutes later, but Perkins and two other students had blocked the door with their feet. He shot through the door.

The last time anyone spoke with Kristina Heeger, she was headed for a 9 a.m. French class in Norris. Within an hour, the sophomore from Vienna had been shot in the back. But she survived.

It was a story that played out across campus, and far beyond, with so many injured, so many dead. "She's doing better," said a friend, Eric Anderson, Monday night after seeing her. "She's recovering. We're praying for her right now. She couldn't talk to them yet, or anyone, and they didn't know any details about what happened." Tucker Armstrong, 19, a freshman from Stephens City, Va., was passed in front of Norris as he headed to a 10 a.m. class. He said in an e-mail that he "noticed several kids hanging and jumping from the second floor windows trying to land in bushes." Armstrong said he heard repeated bangs. He went to help the people who had leapt from the building, but they yelled at him: "Get out of here, run! At that point I realized they were shots and they just kept going and going." Police and ambulances poured into the area. Dustin Lynch, 19, a sophomore from Churchville, Md., watched from the nearby Drillfield, as unresponsive students were carried out of Norris Hall.

"I saw police officers literally carrying kids out," Lynch said. "It basically looked like they were carrying bodies." Parents arrived at the Inn at Virginia Tech to meet with other grieving families and were distraught at the university's management of the incident. "I think they should have closed the whole thing. It's not worth it. You've got a crazy man on campus. Do something about it," said Hoda Bizri of Princeton, W.Va., who was visiting her daughter Siwar, a graduate student.

Bret Hudner, 23, communications major from Vienna, Va., was heading toward one of the dining halls and suddenly a scrum of police cars came racing by. "The scary thing is I know I'm going to go into classes, and there's going to be empty spaces," Hudner said.

The Bizris, meanwhile, were waiting for news about a friend whom they could not locate. They think she was inside Norris Hall.