Canberra
Australia grieves with America today following the mass shooting of primary school children and teachers in Connecticut.
Like President Obama and his fellow Americans, our hearts too are broken.
We share America's shock at this senseless and incomprehensible act of evil.
As parents and grandparents, as brothers and sisters, as friends of the American people, we mourn the loss of children, aged only five to ten years, whose futures lay before them.
We mourn the loss of brave teachers who sought only to lead their students into that future but were brutally murdered in a place of refuge and learning.
Our thoughts today are with the people of America.
We hold in our hearts the families who have lost loved children and who face grief beyond measure. We think of the families of the teachers.
And we hope for the recovery of those injured in body and spirit.