Police defusing bombs at Batman gunman's flat

Police investigating the horrific mass shooting at a cinema in the United States are concentrating on defusing up to 12 bombs at the gunman's flat.

The 24-year-old suspect James Holmes was arrested after 12 people were shot dead and 58 were wounded in a rampage at a midnight screening of the new Batman movie.

Aurora police spokesperson Casidee Carlson says they're defusing bombs at the flat.

"This is going to happen in three phases today. First and foremost we need to render the area safe. The most immediate threat is the trip wire, the booby trap."

Sky News reports trip wire and the first bomb have now been defused.

The FBI's Jim Yacone says bomb experts are still trying to disarm other devices.

"The threat has not been completely eliminated. It has been significantly reduced, we still have armed technicians and evidence response recovery folks that literally have to go in there and handle unknown substances."

Mr Yacone says experts are determined to do the investigations just right.

"Robot bomb technicians and dynamic explosive disruption tools were used to render safe multiple booby traps."

"Extensive amount of evidence is in the process of being collected and we will bring this portion of the investigation to a close, and allow the families back in their homes here probably by tomorrow. All evidence will be sent to the Terrorist Explosive Device Analytical Centre at the FBI's lab at Quantico."

Aurora Police chief Dan Oates says Holmes wanted to kill police.

"This apartment was designed I say, based on everything I've seen, to kill whoever entered it and who was most likely to enter that location after he planned and executed this horrific crime? It was going to be a police officer."

"And if you think we're angry, we sure as hell are angry. What has happened to our city, what has happened to these wonderful people who live here, and also what he threatened to do to one of our police officers."

CNN's Dave Lavendera is in Aurora where the shooting took place:

"What they're trying to do is try to preserve as much evidence inside that apartment as they possibly can. They want to get their hands on James Holmes' computers or any other kind of device that might help explain the motive behind this horrific attack," he says.

The mother of James Holmes, Arlene, has told media in the US she knew it was her son who carried out the killings as soon as she heard about the massacre.

She says it was mother's intuition.

Meanwhile some of those wounded in the Batman movie mass shooting in the United States remain in hospital.

Dr Rob Synder of the Aurora Medical Centre in Denver says a couple are critical.

"Still have seven patients in the hospital, we have three patients on the regular floor, our trauma floor, we have four patients in the intensive care unit. Of those four patients that are in the intensive care unit, two of them remain in a critical condition."

Dr Snyder says they have a long road to recovery ahead.

"Today's the day that there's going to be some realisation that there is going to be some serious long term issues that people are going to have to deal with."

He says it's been a terrible ordeal.

"You try to distance yourself professionally from a situation like this, but these are young people, young families. It's difficult not to put yourself in their situation."

Carol O'Shay from the Victim Services Unit says its been a harrowing experience getting in touch with the families of those who didn't survive.

"The process, by the way, is painful and long and it's unforgivably difficult for families."

But Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper says this massacre should be kept in context.

"This is isolated. This is one event that has no relevance to what people should expect today or tomorrow or the next day."

Photo: Police break a window into James Holmes' booby trapped apartment (Getty Images)