Doctors treating Gabrielle Giffords, the US Congresswoman shot yesterday in Tucson, Arizona, said today they were "cautiously optimistic" about her chances of recovery.
Surgeons at the University Medical Center said Giffords, a 40-year-old Democratic member of the House of Representatives, was communicating with them and able to follow simple commands, such as holding up two fingers when asked. A single bullet travelled the length of her brain on the left side, doctors said.
"This is about as good as good can get," said Dr Peter Rhee. Giffords had undergone surgery to remove bone fragments and some damaged brain tissue, and remains in a critical condition.
Six other people, including a nine-year-old girl, a federal judge and a member of Giffords's staff, were killed when a gunman opened fire outside a supermarket in Tucson where the politician was meeting with constituents, shooting 18 people.
A 22-year-old, identified by investigators as Jared Lee Loughner, was arrested at the scene and remains in federal custody.
The nine-year-old girl who was killed has been named as Christina Taylor Greene. Born on September 11 2001, her parents described her as the "best daughter in the world". She was featured in a book called Faces of Hope: Babies Born on 9/11. She had a keen interest in politics, was on her school council, and had wanted to go to the event to learn more about the political process.
The other victims were named today as John Roll, 63, a federal district court judge; Gabriel Zimmerman, Giffords's 30-year-old director of community outreach; Dorwin Stoddard, 76, a pastor; Dorothy Murray, 76; and 79-year-old Phyllis Scheck.
At a press conference following the attack, the Pima County Sheriff, Clarence Dupnik, blamed political vitriol for fuelling the attack.
"People tend to pooh-pooh this business that we hear about all the vitriol we hear inflaming the American public by people who make a living doing that," he said. "That may be free speech – but there are consequences."
He said Arizona had become "a Mecca for prejudice and bigotry" and that "people who are unbalanced are especially susceptible to vitriol".
As the US president, Barack Obama, ordered the FBI director, Robert Mueller, to Tucson to oversee the investigation, Dupnik said police had a photo of a second man they are searching for, who they believe was also involved in the attack.
The shooting happened shortly after 10am local time outside a Safeway store. Loughner opened fire on Giffords while she was talking at an event called Congress on Your Corner, designed to allow members of Giffords's district to meet her face to face.
Witnesses said the gunman ran into a "crowded area" and began "firing indiscriminately".
After shooting Giffords, the gunman used a semi-automatic weapon to fire at up to 30 people, leaving 13 people wounded, many of whom were airlifted to hospital.
The man tried to flee only when he ran out of ammunition. One of Giffords's aides tackled the assailant and helped to pin him down until police arrived.
More details emerged today as it was revealed that Loughner, the man now under arrest, had shown increasingly strange behaviour in recent months.
He had made internet postings – at least one showing a gun – and a series of videos in which he made disjointed statements on topics like the gold standard and mind control, according to the New York Times.
Pima Community College said he had been suspended for conduct violations. He left the college in October after five instances of disruptions that involved the campus police.
The shooting has sparked fierce critics of the toxic political climate both in Arizona and the US as a whole. In recent months, Giffords, a supporter of the healthcare reforms, had received death threats, and her offices had been shot at.
While the motive for the shooting was not immediately clear, Giffords is one of 10 Democrat members of Congress who were the subject of harassment over their support for Obama's healthcare overhaul.
She was named as a political campaign target for conservatives in last November's mid-term elections by the former Alaska governor Sarah Palin.
Palin had published a "target map" on her website using images of gunsights to identify 20 House Democrats, including Giffords, backing the new healthcare law. Gifford won by a narrow margin, seeing off opposition from a Tea Party-backed Republican candidate.
Palin issued a statement via her Facebook page offering her "sincere condolences" to Giffords and her family.
Giffords was also the target of a campaign advert for her election opponent, Jesse Kelly, which invited supporters to fire a gun with the candidate. It read: "Get on Target for Victory in November. Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office. Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly."
John Ellinwood, Kelly's spokesman, said he did "not see the connection" between fundraisers featuring weapons and the shooting. He added: "I don't know this person, we cannot find any records that he was associated with the campaign in any way … Arizona is a state where people are firearms owners. This was just a deranged individual."