Robert Aaron Long

Six Asian women were among eight people shot and killed at spas around the US city of Atlanta Tuesday, with a white man in custody on suspicion of staging all three attacks, police said. 

The shootings came with many Asian-Americans already on edge following a recent spike in hate crimes against the community, and triggered immediate fears that Asian-run businesses may have been deliberately targeted.

Four of the victims were killed at Young's Asian Massage near Acworth, a suburb of Georgia state capital Atlanta, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

Captain Jay Baker of the Cherokee County sheriff's office told the paper the victims were two Asian women, a white woman, and a white man, while a Hispanic man was wounded.

Police separately confirmed that four women had been killed in attacks on two other spas in the northeast of the city. Police told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that all four were Asian women.

South Korea's Yonhap News Agency reported the country's foreign ministry had confirmed that four of the victims were of Korean descent.

Authorities have identified Robert Aaron Long as a suspect in all three shootings based on CCTV footages.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation was assisting in the investigation, a spokesman told AFP.

The shootings come as reports of attacks against Asian-Americans, primarily elders, have spiked in recent months -- fueled during the Covid-19 pandemic, activists believe, by talk of the "Chinese virus" by former president Donald Trump and others.

News of the shootings came just hours after the release of a report by the advocacy group Stop AAPI Hate suggested a marked increase in hate crimes against Asia-Americans -- with women disproportionately affected.

In a tally of incidents reported to the group between March 2020 and February this year, almost 70 percent of Asian-American survey respondents said they had faced verbal harassment and just over one in 10 said they had experienced physical assault.

In an address to the nation last Thursday, President Joe Biden forcefully condemned what he called "vicious hate crimes against Asian-Americans who have been attacked, harassed, blamed and scapegoated."