Two children are among at least 10 people injured in a shooting at a carnival street party in Manchester in northern England before dawn on Sunday.

The incident  occurred after the end of the first day of the two-day annual Caribbean Carnival  which had started with a parade involving local schools and community groups. Celebrations were set to continue on Sunday.

Responding to reports of gunshots at 2.30 a.m. police sent  “large numbers” of armed officers to the scene.

“Nine people went to hospital, including two children, with pellet-type wounds that are not believed to be serious,” a spokesperson for Greater Manchester Police said.

“A tenth person – a man – remains in a stable but serious condition in hospital with injuries to his legs.”

Chief  Superintendent Wasim Chaudhry told a press conference that ” the injuries were consistent with pellet injuries, predominantly around the injured parties’ legs, which have required hospital treatment…our working premise is that it was a shotgun involved in the incident.”

The shooting came amid a nationwide increase in violent crime, with the number of homicides recorded by police in England and Wales up by 12 per cent, knife crime offences by 16 per cent and robbery by 30 per cent in the year to March.

The Office for National Statistics reported a 2 per cent rise in gun crime in the same period, to almost 6,500 offences, but said the increase was “far less pronounced than previously seen”.

The  2018 Manchester carnival  is commemorating the 70th anniversary of the arrival of the Windrush generation, a group of people from the Caribbean who arrived in Britain on the Empire Windrush, a passenger liner, after they were encouraged to move to the country to fill a labor shortage