One year anniversary of Sandy Hook massacre

President Obama has marked the anniversary of the massacre at Sandy Hook elementary school with a moment of silence at the White House.

Before pausing to remember the Connecticut school tragedy a year ago, the president and first lady Michelle Obama lit 26 votive candles set up on a table in the Map Room - one candle for each of the 20 children and six staff members who were killed.

Church bells in Newtown, Connecticut, rang 26 times as the names of each of the victims were read at the town's St Rose of Lima church, one of several houses of worship that held private services for a community still grieving the deaths.

President Barack Obama has spoken out on gun control on the anniversary of the Sandy Hook massacre, when 27 people were killed by high school gunman Adam Lanza in Connecticut.

"We haven't yet done enough to make our communities and our country safer," Obama said. "We have to do more to keep dangerous people from getting their hands on a gun so easily. We have to do more to heal troubled minds."

The president, whose address was pre-recorded, did not refer to the shooting at a Colorado high school which left one female student in critical condition.

Obama is due to observe a moment of silence at the White House today in memory of those who died at Sandy Hook.

Earlier this year the US Senate blocked new laws that would have made it harder for Americans to buy certain types of weapons.

Today is the first anniversary of the US Sandy Hook school massacre, in which 27 people died at the hands of 20-year-old Adam Lanza.

Residents of Newton, Connecticut, will mark the date quietly, without any public memorials, and have urged others to honour the victims with random acts of kindness.

The anniversary comes a day after a student shot and wounded pupils at a high school in Colorado before shooting himself dead at the scene.