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NEW ORLEANS Gunfire wounded four people on New Orleans’ famed Bourbon Street on Saturday night as a costumed crowd partied amid the countdown to Mardi Gras, sending people running, according to police and bystander accounts.

In a video taken by a witness and released by police Sunday, four shots ring out rapidly, followed by screams as some in the crowd stagger into one another and a nearby wall. Police said in an email that an argument involving one of the victims led to the shooting. They described the video as showing two men leaving the argument and returning with a third, then approaching the victim and shooting. A man whom police identified in a statement as one of the perpetrators moves deeper into the crowd and extends his arm as the gunfire erupts.

No arrests were immediately reported, and police said they were seeking three men who fled, including the one seen extending his arm.

The wounded were two males and two females, New Orleans Police spokesman Frank B. Robertson said. One male victim was in guarded condition Sunday with shots to the abdomen, thigh and pelvis, Robertson said. The second male was shot in the buttocks, one female was shot on the chin and right foot, and the second female was shot on the toe, according to Robertson’s statement.

Police had said late Saturday that the most severely wounded man was undergoing surgery while the others were stable. None was identified by age or name.

The shooting came on the last weekend of partying before Mardi Gras, the Fat Tuesday celebration that is the signature tourist event of the year in New Orleans. And for thousands, the partying continued despite the shooting.

New Orleans has been plagued for years by violent crime, including gun violence that has soared since Hurricane Katrina devastated the city in 2005.

In 2011, sixteen people were shot and at least two killed in Halloween shootings in New Orleans. One of those killed — a 25-year-old local resident — was shot near the famous Chris Owens nightclub, about a block away from Saturday’s incident.

Police placed the Saturday shooting in the 400 block of Bourbon Street.

Patrick Clay, 21, a Louisiana State University student, told The Times-Picayune that he was standing on the corner of Bourbon Street on Saturday night when suddenly he saw a crowd running and people screaming that there had been a shooting.

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