INTERNATIONAL: Four people were shot at a large shopping mall in a Chicago suburb on Thursday night after multiple gunshots were fired, prompting holiday shoppers to flee for safety inside the back rooms of stores.

A footage from the scene at the Oakbrook Center about 30 kilometers west of Chicago has showed heavily armed SWAT teams entering stores one by one and escorting shoppers who had been told to shelter in place after the shooting.

One shopper who was evacuated from a store said she and nearly 40 others locked themselves into a back room for hours before police gave the all-clear.

"We were purchasing our items and then we heard four or five shots. And then two other people come storming into the store and they said 'get down, get down'," the unidentified woman narrated.

SWAT teams were escorting shoppers outside store-by-store in case the offender they believed may be at large was still at the scene. Four gunshot victims were hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries and that one of the victims might possibly be one of two suspected shooters in the incident.

Another suspected shooter was in custody and a third person of interest "may or may not be at large." The two suspects involved in the shooting were believed to be firing bullets towards one another and that their ricocheting bullets injured the two others.

Some 100 police officers from area agencies have swarmed onto the scene of the mall after the shooting.

^{PHOTO: AERIALS OF SWAT TEAM ESCORTING SHOPPERS WITH THEIR HANDS IN THE AIR / MORE POLICE AERIALS OF THE MALL AFTER REPORTS OF A MULTIPLE SHOOTING / INTERVIEWS WITH SHOPPERS AND POLICE CHIEF}