Six Graduates Hurt as Gunfire Erupts at Party : Violence: Attackers fire at the Venice home of an honors student. Incident is the second in three days in which a graduation gathering ends in shooting.

For the second time in three days, a high school graduation party ended in a rain of bullets as gunmen wearing bandannas shot up a Venice gathering early Tuesday, injuring six graduates outside the home of an honors student.

The victims, who graduated Monday night from St. Monica’s High School in Santa Monica, were shot in the legs and arms and one was hit in the side. By Tuesday afternoon, four had been treated and released from hospitals. Two others were reported in stable condition.

Authorities had no motive, but said the students may have been randomly chosen victims in a yearlong war between local black and Latino gangs that has left at least 13 people dead and besieged a nearby section of Venice. Two or three masked attackers, who fired at least 30 rounds from semiautomatic weapons as they drove past in a pickup truck, were described as black men, while four of the victims are Latinos and two are white, police said.

No one at the party was affiliated with gangs, said police, who speculated that the victims may have been singled out only because of their ethnicity.

Before Tuesday’s shooting at the house across from the Penmar Recreation Center, the gang war had been confined mainly to neighboring Oakwood, about half a mile away, and a housing project more than two miles away, near Culver City.

The party’s host, 18-year-old Eugene Travnikoff, said he had left to get food as the gathering was breaking up about 3:30 a.m. By the time he returned, he found ambulances arriving to take away his wounded classmates--four young men and a young woman.

“I thought the worst,” Travnikoff said. “I thought everybody was dead or something.”

Friends who gathered at the home later said witnesses told them shots were fired from a pickup truck and a car. At least two students were wounded as they ran to help friends who had been shot. Among the injured students were two honors graduates and a professional skateboarder whose leg was shattered in the incident, according to friends and school officials. Police would not release the names of the injured.

On Tuesday, the house bore several bullet holes and there was a chunk missing from a basketball backboard. Friends who just the night before had donned green graduation gowns now wore hospital passes that allowed them to visit friends.

“You go from graduating--a big moment--to not knowing what happened to your best friends,” said Travnikoff, sleepless and shaken by the incident.

The tragedy follows an incident Sunday that left two dead and seven injured when youths with semiautomatic weapons opened fire on an end-of-school party in San Marino. Unlike the highly advertised San Marino party, police said, the informal Venice get-together was a quiet affair. About a dozen people were outside when the shooting occurred, and Travnikoff said his parents were at home.

“We were hanging out--kicking it,” said Salvador Lomeli, a classmate. “We were fine.”

The incident shocked officials at the 600-student Catholic school.

“We had a beautiful ceremony, “ said Sister Cheryl Milner, the principal. “It’s tragic to have something like this juxtaposed with such a wonderful evening.”