A note forgiving gunman Seung-Hui Cho at a memorial on the Virginia Tech campus. (Reuters)

Blacksburg (Virginia), April 21 (Reuters): Students at Virginia Tech university prepared for funerals today for nearly a dozen shooting victims and extended a note of forgiveness to the gunman who killed 32 people on campus.

A small tribute to Seung-Hui Cho, who shot his victims then himself on Monday, has been added to a growing memorial of stones in the centre of the sprawling university in southwest Virginia. (The order of Cho’s name has been changed in line with his family’s practice. He had been previously identified by police and university officials as Cho Seung-Hui.)

“I just wanted you to know that I am not mad at you. I don’t hate you,” read a note among flowers at a stone marker labelled for Cho. “I am so sorry that you could find no help or comfort.”

The note, one of three expressing sorrow and sympathy for the gunman, a mentally disturbed English major, was signed: “With all my love, Laura.” A purple candle burned and a small American flag stood in the ground nearby. Other memorial stones were decorated with objects including flags from Canada, Peru, and Israel for victims who came from those countries.

Mourners wearing the school’s orange and maroon colours wandered the campus, adding flowers and scrawling messages of grief on makeshift memorials on the university grounds.

Graduate student Chris Chabalko, 29, said adding a stone memorial for Cho was fair. “He was a student. Thirty-three people died,” said Chabalko. “There’s nothing anyone can do about it now. We’ve got to remember them equally.”

Questions remained about how Cho, who had been investigated after stalking complaints in 2005 and treated for mental illness, was able to buy the two guns he used in the rampage.

Under federal law, Cho should have been barred from buying a gun, but wording differences with a Virginia law allowed him to legally get a weapon.