A 21-year-old white man was charged with nine counts of murder in connection with an attack on a historic black South Carolina church, police said yesterday, and media reports said he had hoped to incite a race war in the United States.

Residents of Charleston flocked to the nearly-200-year-old Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church as they struggled to comprehend how suspected shooter Dylann Roof could sit with worshippers for an hour of Bible study before allegedly opening fire late on Wednesday, killing nine black people and fleeing into the night, triggering a 14-hour manhunt.

“This was not merely a mass shooting, not merely a matter of gun violence, this was a racial hate crime and must be confronted as such,” said Cornell William Brooks, president of the NAACP. The National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People was founded in 1909 to confront lynchings in the United States.

From US President Barack Obama, who said the attack stirred memories of “a dark past,” to residents on the streets of Charleston, Americans expressed outrage at an act intended to provoke a “race war” in the United States.

“I grew up when racism was just a way of life,” said Mary Meynardie, 90, who is white, as she stopped by the police tape that still surrounded the church known as Mother Emanuel. “I wouldn’t have been surprised if it was somebody 60, 70 years old who had that much hate, but where does this hate come from?”

He sat with parishioners for an hour before opening fire and almost did not go through with the attack because he had been welcomed

Roof confessed to the attack and said he intended to set off new racial confrontations, CNN reported, citing a law enforcement source. He sat with parishioners for an hour before opening fire and almost did not go through with the attack because he had been welcomed, NBC News reported, citing a law enforcement source. Charleston Police spokesman Charles Francis declined to comment on the reports of a confession.

In addition to the church’s leader and Democratic state Senator Clementa Pinckney, 41, victims included pastors DePayne Middleton Doctor, 49; Sharonda Coleman Singleton, 45; and Reverend Daniel Simmons, 74.

Also killed were Cynthia Hurd, 54, a public library employee; Susie Jackson, 87; Ethel Lance, 70; Tywanza Sanders, 26; and Myra Thompson 59, an associate pastor at the church, according to the county coroner. South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, a Republican, told NBC’s Today show she believed state prosecutors should pursue a death sentence.

The AME church was founded in the early 19th century by black worshippers who were limited in how they could practise their faith at white-dominated churches. The church was rebuilt after being burned down in the late 1820s.

Compounding anger over the killings, the South Carolina capitol continues to fly the Confederate battle flag, the symbol of the pro-slavery South during the US Civil War. Brooks, the NAACP leader, renewed calls for the flag to be taken down. Roof’s car bore the Confederate flag and he posed for a portrait on social media wearing a jacket with the flags of apartheid-era South Africa and Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe.

“Some will assert that the Confederate flag is merely a symbol of years gone by, a symbol of heritage, not hate,” Brooks said. “But when we see that symbol lifted up as an emblem for hate ... that symbol has to come down, that symbol has to be removed from our state capitol.”