Three major U.S. cities struggling to curb a surge in gun violence collectively had at least 70 people shot, 16 dead, including a 7-year-old girl, in multiple shootings this weekend, according to police.

The shootings in New York, Philadelphia and Chicago came as all three cities have seen sharp increases in the numbers of shootings in 2021.

In Chicago, at least 52 people were shot between 6 p.m. on Friday and 11:59 p.m. Sunday, nine of them fatally, according to the Chicago Police Department. Twenty-three of the shootings occurred over just a 4-hour period between 12:26 a.m. and 4:30 a.m. on Sunday, according to incident reports reviewed by ABC News.

Just before 3 p.m. on Sunday, a 7-year-old girl was killed and her 6-year-old sister was seriously wounded when someone opened fire on a parked vehicle they were sitting in the Belmont Central neighborhood on the city’s Northwest Side, police said. {snip}

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More than 250 children have been shot and 32 killed in Chicago this year, according to police data obtained by ABC station WLS.

Prior to this weekend, more than 2,123 people had been shot in Chicago this year, which is a 12% increase from the same time period in 2020, according to police department crime statistics. Before this weekend, Chicago has recorded 478 homicides, a 2% increase over last year at this time.

The shootings this weekend in Chicago followed last weekend’s violence, which saw 73 people shot in the city, 11 fatally.

Chicago police Officer Ella French was among those gunned down last weekend when she and her two partners pulled over a car for having expired tags. One of French’s partners, a 39-year-old officer, was shot in the eye and remains in a hospital in critical condition with a bullet lodged in his brain, police said. Two brothers were arrested and charged in French’s slaying.

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Entering the weekend, 1,333 people had been shot in Philadelphia this year, a 19% increase from the same period a year ago, according to police department crime statistics. By the end of Friday, the city had recorded 329 homicides, a 26% increase from the same time period in 2020, the data shows.

Eleven more people were shot in Philadelphia over the weekend, five fatally, according to police.

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Kenney said during a news conference last month that the city allocated over $150 million in its fiscal year 2022 budget to address gun violence. He said he has spoken to President Joe Biden “on the urgent need for new and enhanced approaches” to combat the problem.

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In New York City, where more than 1,100 people have been shot this year, an 11% increase from a year ago, police said 15 more people were shot, three fatally, in 11 separate incidents on Friday night alone. The three homicides occurred in just 4 1/2 hours.

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Among the non-fatal New York shootings, four men were wounded just after midnight Saturday at the Louis Armstrong Houses in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in the city’s Brooklyn borough, the NYPD said.