The man accused of opening fire at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado and killing three people said “no more baby parts” while he was being arrested, according to reports citing law enforcement sources.

The utterance would appear to reference the controversy surrounding the organisation’s health services, which include abortion, and its role in delivering foetal tissue to medical researchers.

It could hint at a possible motive for the deadly shooting, though NBC reported that its sources said investigators still did not know what had motivated gunman Robert Lewis Dear, who surrendered to police after a five-hour siege at the clinic.

• Abortion available on the phone
• Vic Govt supports abortion clinic buffer zone
• ‘I felt anxious, judged and guilt-ridden’

Authorities have not discussed a motive for the attack at the Colorado Springs clinic, which left a police officer and two civilians dead and nine people injured.

Shortly after the media reports, attorney-general Loretta E Lynch released a statement in which she condemned the shooting.

“This unconscionable attack was not only a crime against the Colorado Springs community, but a crime against women receiving healthcare services at Planned Parenthood, law enforcement seeking to protect and serve, and other innocent people,” she said.

Vicki Cowart, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Rocky Mountains, said the shooting was an “appalling act of violence targeting access to health care and terrorising skilled and dedicated health care professionals”.

“Eyewitnesses confirm that the man who will be charged with the tragic and senseless shooting… was motivated by opposition to safe and legal abortion,” she said.

Dear, 57, was taken into custody at the Planned Parenthood clinic and jailed ahead of a court appearance scheduled for Monday (local time).

It was not clear if Dear, a South Carolina native who appeared to have moved to Colorado last year, had retained an attorney.

The shooting was believed to be the first fatal attack at an abortion provider in the United States in six years, although it was not known if it was related to the clinic’s abortion services.

Police said a total of 24 people who had at one point been in a hostage situation were evacuated unharmed from the Planned Parenthood building, while some 300 people hunkered down in surrounding businesses.

US president Barack Obama said the suspect was armed with an assault weapon and had held hostages at the Planned Parenthood centre, from which he opened fire at people outside.

“This is not normal. We can’t let it become normal,” a clearly frustrated Mr Obama said in a statement.

“If we truly care about this – if we’re going to offer up our thoughts and prayers again, for God knows how many times, with a truly clean conscience – then we have to do something about the easy accessibility of weapons of war on our streets to people who have no business wielding them.”

Planned Parenthood ‘discussed obtaining tissue from foetuses’

The Colorado Springs centre has been repeatedly targeted for protests by anti-abortion activists.

Planned Parenthood came under fire this year after officials of the organisation were secretly recorded by an anti-abortion group discussing how to obtain human tissue from aborted foetuses.

The videos have triggered protests over the national non-profit organisation’s role in such activities and have become an issue in the 2016 presidential election race as conservatives in Congress seek to cut off Planned Parenthood’s federal funding.

Planned Parenthood has strongly denied doing anything illegal or unethical.

At least eight workers at clinics providing abortions have been killed since 1977, according to the National Abortion Federation, most recently in 2009 when doctor George Tiller was shot to death at church in Wichita, Kansas.

-with agencies