"Entry was made, the suspect shot one of the hostages and then shot himself, that's what it looks like at this time," Wegener told reporters. The second hostage escaped unharmed.

The critically injured girl was airlifted to St Anthony Central Hospital in Denver but died later Wednesday.

"I can confirm the girl has died," hospital spokeswoman Bev Lilly told AFP, refusing to give any more details about the victim.

The shooting immediately evoked memories of the 1999 Columbine high school massacre in neighbouring Jefferson County, when 13 students were gunned down by two teenage pupils who then killed themselves.

Wegener, who has worked in the small community of Park County for 36 years and whose son attends the school, said police were struggling to come to terms with the latest shooting tragedy to hit Colorado.

"We're just shocked this has happened in a rural county," said Wegener, his voice trembling with emotion.

"I don't know the identity of the gunman, I don't know why he wanted to do this and hopefully the investigation will reveal who it is," he told reporters.

"I have not yet been able to talk with the family of the female student that was shot but my prayers are with them," Wegener said.

At a press conference later Wednesday, Wegener revealed he had feared the worst after being called to the school.

"I was scared to death at what we might find. No-one wants anything like this to happen at their school," he said.

The siege began when the gunman entered the school at around 12:00 pm (1800 GMT) and fired "more than one shot", claiming to be carrying a bomb in a rucksack, police said.

The gunman had initially taken six hostages but released four of them during the afternoon. Wegener said the gunman had communicated with officers by asking his hostages to shout messages.

He said it was not clear what the gunman had been demanding.

"Your guess is as good as mine," Wegener said.

A decision to storm the building was taken when the man broke off communications around 30 minutes before the expiration of a 4:00 pm (2200 GMT) deadline.

"It was decided that a tactical solution was necessary in an effort to save the two hostages that were in the room," Wegener said.

Earlier, the high school and neighbouring Fitzsimmons Middle School were evacuated while bomb squads and SWAT teams were deployed to the complex.

Television images showed dozens of students forming orderly queues before boarding school buses and being ferried away.

One student, 16-year-old Zak Barnes, described how pupils had burst into tears after being told a gunman was on the loose in the school before they were led to safety by a police officer.

"You would not expect this to happen in our school," Barnes told reporters.

The girl's mother, Ommettress Travis, has said she was asked to leave the room during the half-hour procedure. When she returned, her daughter was lying in the dental chair, not breathing, Travis said.

"She passed very peacefully and beautifully," a family statement released by the hospital said.

A Chicago law firm, Clifford Law Offices, also filed paperwork to begin exploring if a malpractice case would have merit, said Thomas K. Prindable, managing partner of the firm.

The girl's dentist, Hicham Riba, was certified to administer anesthesia to patients and his state license was current, said Susan Hofer, a spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation.

A written statement from Riba on Wednesday night extended condolences to the girl's family. "(My family and I) are so sad," he said. "May God bless Diamond and her family."

The telephone rang unanswered at Riba's home Wednesday night.

The report, Progress for Children, surveyed available clean water and sanitation facilities from 1990 to 2004 and calculated which countries could meet goals set at a U.N. Millennium summit in 2000.

These include cutting in half by 2015 the proportion of people without safe drinking water and basic sanitation.

"Despite commendable progress, an estimated 425 million children under the age of 18 still do not have access to an improved water supply and over 980 million do not have access to adequate sanitation, said Anne Veneman, UNICEF's executive director and a former U.S. secretary of agriculture.

Overall, about 1.2 billion people, or an increase from 78 percent in 1990 to 83 percent in 2004, had access to drinking water, a figure that would meet the Millennium goals.

Still, more than 1 billion people were without clean water in 2004 from sources such as wells or springs, a number which may increase as the population grows, the report said.

The lack of access to water is especially acute in sub-Saharan Africa, which represents about 11 percent of the world's population but almost a third of all people without access to safe drinking water.

But even in North Africa and the Middle East, people living in arid rural areas suffer from lack of water. In Djibouti, Iraq and Morocco, for example, more than 40 percent of the rural population have no access to proper drinking water.

Among the worst-affected nations, where less than 50 percent of the population has can find proper water sources, are Nigeria, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Niger, Equatorial Guinea and Chad, the report said.

Meanwhile, access to basic facilities such as flush toilets or cleanable latrines slabs rose to 59 percent from 49 percent in 1990 but remained short of U.N. targets.

Of the 2.6 billion people worldwide without access to proper sanitation, about 2 billion live in rural areas, some two-thirds in sub-Saharan Africa and 37 percent in South Asia.

At the same time, the largest gains were in Asia, especially in India and China. But the report said the majority of people in both countries still have no adequate sanitation.

A woman was also killed when she was electrocuted by a fallen power line in Quezon province, just east of Manila, local officials added.

Radio reports said three more people died in the central province of Albay but this could not be confirmed.

Packing winds of 130 kilometers (81 miles) per hour, Xangsane was charted before dawn Thursday about 120 kilometers (74 miles) southeast of Manila, off the coast of the eastern province of Quezon.

It was moving northwest at 17 kilometers (11 miles) per hour and was expected to hit Manila by noon, the weather bureau said.

The highest level of a three-step storm alert has been raised over Metropolitan Manila and nine surrounding provinces while the second level alert has been raised over provinces to the north and south of the capital.

As the typhoon approached, financial markets and schools were closed in the capital and surrounding provinces, authorities said.

International and domestic flights from Manila's airports were all cancelled, airport general manager Alfonso Cusi said.

Inter-island shipping was also halted in areas affected by the typhoon.

Floods and fallen trees blocked many roads leaving hundreds of motorists stranded, the civil defense office added, while electricity was also knocked out in some areas of the capital due to fallen power lines.

In Manila flash floods turned streets into rivers and inundated homes in low-lying areas as storm drains overflowed.

Strong winds knocked over trees and toppled billboards and their steel scaffolding onto the streets.

"We have rubber rafts. We have prepared chainsaws and acetylene torches if some billboards get blown down," said Metropolitan Manila general manager Robert Nacianceno.

Barbaza town in the central island of Panay was flooded with about 100 people forced to scramble on to the roofs of their houses, civil defense officials said.

Rescue workers were using boats to ferry people from the flooded town to higher land after emergency helicopters had to cancel flights due to the weather.

"Around 30 families have been trapped by the overflowing river," said coast guard spokesman Lieutenant Commander Jose Coyme.

"We are trying to get to the area but the current from the overflowing river has been too strong," said Coyme.

Local relief teams and volunteers rescued some of the stranded people by tying ropes to trees and stringing them over flooded roads and streams, then wading across, hanging onto the ropes to keep from getting swept away by the current.

Widespread flooding was also reported in the central island of Leyte although residents were able to evacuate in time.

The coast guard, civil defense and local authorities have warned communities to be on alert for possible landslides and flash floods.

The U.S. Geological Survey (www.usgs.gov) put the quake's magnitude at 6.7 and said it was centered in the Samoa islands group between Tonga and American Samoa. It said the quake occurred 43 km (27 miles) under the sea floor.

The epicenter was about 195 km (120 miles) southeast of Hihifo in the sparsely populated far northern reaches of Tonga and about 290 km (180 miles) southwest of Pago Pago in American Samoa.

"No tsunami threat exists for other coastal areas in the Pacific, although some other areas may experience small sea level changes," the tsunami warning center said.

The situation nearer the epicenter was less certain, it said.

"As local conditions can cause a wide variation in tsunami wave action, the all-clear determination must be made by local authorities," it added.

That decision could only be made when no major waves were observed for two hours after the estimated time of arrival of damaging waves, it said.

Strong earthquakes are common across the far-flung islands of the vast South Pacific.

A 6.8 quake hit a remote part of Papua New Guinea on September 1, while a 6.7 quake rattled Vanuatu on August 8, although neither caused any significant damage or major rises in sea level.

Papua New Guinea lies along the "Ring of Fire," a belt of volcanoes circling the Pacific Ocean that is also prone to major earthquakes.

At 5 p.m. EDT, the depression's center was located about 810 miles east-southeast of Bermuda and moving toward the northwest near 14 mph, forecasters said. It had top sustained winds near 35 mph.

The Atlantic hurricane season began June 1 and ends Nov. 30. September is traditionally one of the busiest months of the season.

The storm was not likely to become a hurricane in part because it was expected to move over cooler waters, which would sap its strength, meteorologist Daniel Brown said.

In Antique province on central Panay island, three people were killed, said acting governor Eduardo Fortaleza.

He said rescue workers evacuated about 100 people who were trapped on an islet in the middle of a raging river in Barbaza town early Thursday.

The Office of Civil Defense in Manila reported half of the villages in one town in Antique province were under five feet of water after the Dalanas River overflowed.

Elsewhere, more than 4,000 ferry passengers were stranded after the coast guard kept vessels in ports, including in Manila.

The coastal province of Albay, 200 miles southeast of Manila, felt the brunt of the typhoon.

A regional highway was cut because of uprooted trees, power cuts were reported in six provinces and a landslide cut off the road between Antique and Iloilo provinces, the civil defense reported.

Rescuers in other provinces were unable to respond to calls for help because of heavy rains and blocked roads, Bicol civil defense chief Arnel Capili told Radio DZRH.

"This one caught us on our toes. We had Fourpeaked in that category of volcanoes we didn't need to worry about," said Michael West, a seismologist with the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute, one of the partner agencies with the Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys and the U.S. Geological Survey at AVO.

Last Wednesday, AVO assigned Fourpeaked a level of concern of yellow in its four-color system, defined as elevated seismic activity with the potential of an eruption. Fourpeaked previously was not assigned a level of concern.

In an update Monday, AVO warned that an eruption in the next days to week is possible. The update listed three scenarios, with the most likely first:

- A small to moderate eruption, with ash plumes higher than 33,000 feet and possible lava flows;

- No eruption, with the current unrest subsiding to background levels;

- A large eruption, with ash plumes higher than 33,000 feet and a widespread ash fall.

Since last Wednesday, scientists have flown over Fourpeaked, done chemical analyses and temperature readings of gas coming off the west flank and installed seismometers about 7 miles to the east of the mountain. West said AVO crews will be installing other instruments in the next few weeks. GPS instruments have not yet been put in, so it's not known if there has been deformation or swelling of Fourpeaked, as happened with Augustine Volcano before it erupted in mid-January.

Fourpeaked is acting like Augustine in other ways, West said. On a flight Sunday, scientists photographed a line of fumaroles, or volcanic vents, steaming through a glacier along the west flank of Fourpeaked. West said some ash was seen around some of the vents. Measurements at the vents showed temperatures of 140 degrees Fahrenheit, and the presence of sulfur dioxide, hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide, all in high amounts. Ash samples were taken, but have not yet been fully analyzed.

A "rotten egg" sulfur smell was also noticed up to 30 miles away. Sulfur dioxide was present in amounts similar to that measured on Augustine in late December and early January before it erupted on Jan. 11.

"That's the one we use the most. It's a fairly robust measurement - it's one we have experience interpreting," West said.

Scientists also noticed flooding and disturbance of glaciers near the summit.

"Whatever is going on is going on beneath a layer of snow and ice, and has managed to break through a few areas with steam," West said.

Although the Fourpeaked Volcano page on AVO's site has a webicorder - a graph of daily seismometer activity near the mountain - West noted that the station, CDD, is 7 miles away, further than webicorders on Augustine, which are within a mile of the peak. Measurements shouldn't be interpreted the same as with Augustine. Station CDD also is measuring activity on nearby volcanoes.

If Fourpeaked erupts, the most likely hazard would be from airborne ash.

"The kinds of ash hazards would not be unlike the ash hazards from Augustine," West said.

Homer and other Kachemak Bay area communities had a slight dusting of ash during the eruptions in mid-January. Scientists have been studying satellite and radar images of Fourpeaked, and are developing models to see how far and where ash could spread if it erupted. There also is a danger on the mountain from floods or debris and volcanic mud flows.

Fourpeaked lacks not only the heavy instrumentation of Augustine before it erupted, but also its history.

"Augustine has a long historic record of what we might expect. There is no typical behavior for Fourpeaked in the modern era," West said.

Scientists haven't gone to 24-7 hours yet, but they are checking seismographs four times a day, West said.

"Everyone is dialed in on this - our colleagues at USGS and DGGS," he said.

For more information and the latest updates, visit the AVO Web site at www.avo.alaska.edu, or call a recording at (907) 786-7478. Information on emergency preparedness is available at the AVO Web site or at the Kenai Peninsula Borough's Office of Emergency Management Web site at www.borough.kenai.ak.us/emergency/-prepared/volcano.htm.

The National Weather Service produces ash trajectory forecasts for Augustine and Fourpeaked volcanoes on its Web site at www.arl.noaa.gov/ready/traj_alaska.html.

A December 2005 article in the Homer News, "Get out the panty hose: What to do if Augustine blows," also offers advice for preparing for volcano dangers. A link to that article is on the main Homer News Web page at www.homernews.com.

After jumping fire lines on Tuesday, the blaze slowed in the cool overnight weather. But erratic winds could cause it to flare later, said Larry Comerford of the U.S. Forest Service.

"They"ll come from one direction one time and then they'll whip the other direction," he said.

Nearly 4,000 firefighters were deployed to fight the blaze. It was 41 percent contained late Wednesday after chewing through more than 159,281 acres, or nearly 249 square miles, of wilderness.

Residents of Lockwood Valley, Pine Mountain Club, Pinon Pines, Cuddy Valley, Camp Scheidek and Lake of the Woods were urged to evacuate, but many chose to stay in the remote Ventura County communities.

The blaze has destroyed two barns, three trailers, a cabin and five vehicles, said Dee Bechert, a U.S. Forest Service spokeswoman. The blaze was ignited by someone burning debris and firefighting costs have topped $53 million.

Pat Martin, 61, fled her home in Lake of the Woods. Spending the night at a Red Cross shelter set up at a high school gymnasium, she feared her home would be damaged or destroyed.

"When you're this old, how do you just start over?" Martin asked.

In Lockwood Valley, Kelli Herring remained with her horse, three dogs, seven alpacas and a desert tortoise. Firefighters guarded her house, which they had protected from approaching flames on Tuesday.

Herring, 49, said she had no intention of leaving.

"What safer place to be than with a bunch of firefighters?" she said.

The fire had turned 25 of her 43 acres of pine- and sage-dotted ranch land into a blackened wasteland marked by smoldering logs and branches.

"It made me cry this morning," she said. "I'm shocked. It looks like a bomb went off. My pine trees look like matchsticks now."

Also taking their chances were employees of Steve Martin's Working Wildlife, the home of more than 100 exotic animals ranging from bears to lions that are used in show business.

Trainer Rick Clark said the facility didn't have enough trained people to move the animals. He felt it was safer to stay at the 62-acre site.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has declared a state of emergency for Ventura County and the Federal Emergency Management Agency authorized the use of federal funds to cover some expenses.