Alwaght- Five US police officers have been shot dead in Dallas, Texas Thursday night in apparent revenge attacks following the killing of two African Americans by police in Minnesota and Louisiana this week.
It appeared to be the deadliest attack on police officers in the United States since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Downtown Dallas was in lockdown Friday after snipers shot 12 officers, five fatally, during a protest over the deadly police shootings of innocent black men.
The shootings, carried out by two snipers from elevated positions, occurred at around 9 p.m. Thursday as a protest rally was drawing to an end. Hundreds of people had gathered downtown Dallas to protest the police shootings of two African-American men in as many days in Minnesota and Louisiana.
The Dallas police chief, David O. Brown, said that four people armed with rifles were believed to have carried out the attacks. They positioned themselves in triangulated locations near the end of the route the protesters planned to take.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (AFT) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have joined the investigation.
The US Federal Aviation Administration restricted airspace over Dallas following the deadly shootings.
The Dallas rally was part of demonstrations in several other cities in reaction to the fatal police shootings of Philando Castile in a St. Paul suburb on Wednesday and Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge the day before.
US President Barack Obama condemned the killings as “a vicious, calculated and despicable attack on law enforcement”. Speaking in Warsaw where he is attending a two-day Nato summit, the US president again called for gun control. “When people are armed with powerful weapons unfortunately it makes attacks like these more deadly and more tragic,” he said.
