Chicago, which routinely places high in the list of America’s most dangerous cities due to its high homicide rate, has been experiencing a spike in violence startling even by its own grim standards.

Twenty-five people were victims in five mass shootings that rocked the city early on Sunday. A teenage girl was killed in Chicago’s Lawndale neighborhood on Sunday morning in a shooting that resulted in another five people being injured, including an 11-year-old boy.

The girl was shot in the face and died at the scene, police said. A 26-year-old man suffered gunshot wounds to his abdomen and ankle as a gunman fired from a moving vehicle. The man succumbed to his injuries and was pronounced dead in a hospital.

In another mass shooting that took place in a courtyard, eight people, including children, were injured.

Lanwdale witnessed another mass shooting shortly after the city descended into darkness. The incident unraveled near an elementary school, where three teenagers, two boys and a 17-year-girl, as well as a 25-year-old man have been injured in a shooting rampage by unknown perpetrators, The Chicago Sun-Times reported.

A street brawl in the West Garfield Park neighborhood that sparked a shootout between two rivaling gangs resulted in three women, who were standing on a porch nearby, being injured and taken to hospital.

Another shootout unfolded in the West Humbold Park neighborhood, after perpetrators in a black Cadillac fired at a group of people standing on the sidewalk. Four people, including a passerby, were injured as a result. The Cadillac swayed off the road and crashed during the altercation, but the attackers still managed to escape in the car.

A spate of several separate shootings where only one person was affected saw a 14-year-old boy suffer a wound to his leg in Garfield Park, an 18-year-old teenager sustaining “multiple shots” in Lawndale, and a 26-year-old man and a 20-year-old woman being shot in the leg and an abdomen respectively in the Little Village and the Logan Square neighborhoods.

A total of 60 people have been shot across Chicago sine 5 pm Friday, including nine fatally, as the city endured one of its deadliest weekends, ABC’s Chicago affiliate WLS reported on Monday, citing police. Police said that the local hospital, its resources stretched thin by the bloodbath, was placed under “trauma lockdown,” meaning only closest family members can access the patients.

Chicago secured the 12th place in Wall Street Journal’s last year’s rating of 25 America’s murder capitals. While the position in the middle of the list may seem not worth of the nickname “Chiraq,” given to the city for its resemblance to a war zone, the WSJ notes that Chicago, “however, was largely responsible for the increase in violent crime nationwide over the last year,” as its surge in murders, from 18 to 28 murders per 100,000 residents  “accounted for 21 percent of the total increase in homicides nationwide.”

In order to raise awareness about the issue that has been plaguing the city for years activists have recently erected a mock ‘gun-sharing’ station. The station looks basically like a bicycle-sharing station but with AR-15 rifles, with a sign inviting all “to unlock and load.”

A series of deadly mass shootings in the US this and the past year, and, in particular, the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in February, have breathed new life into the gun control movement. A wave of protests with thousands of attendees led by the survivors of the massacre swept across the US, with demonstrators demanding toughen existing lax gun laws in hope to reduce gun-related violence.

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