Dallas shooting: Five police officers killed after snipers open fire at Black Lives Matter protest

Updated

Sorry, this video has expired Video: Dallas Police says shooting ambush appears to be a conspiracy (ABC News)

Five police officers have been killed and seven more injured after gunmen fired on officers during a Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas, officials say.

Key points: Police killed at protest following shootings of two African-American men

One suspect engaged in negotiations, three in custody

Police not certain if they have all suspects

Dallas police department chief David Brown said two gunmen shot at "police officers from elevated positions during the protest", sparking an intense manhunt.

One suspect was killed in a showdown with police, Chief Brown confirmed, while the other suspects in custody — including one black woman — were "not being real cooperative."

The suspect, who had engaged in a shoot-out for 45 minutes with police, had said there were bombs around the city.

"The suspect ... has told our negotiators that the end is coming, and he's going to hurt and kill more of us, meaning law enforcement, and that there are bombs all over the place in this garage and in downtown," Chief Brown said.

But police later confirmed no explosives were found in the area after conducting primary and secondary sweeps.

Three other suspects were taken into custody.

One woman was taken into custody after being seen near a multi-storey car park where police were engaged in the stand-off. Two more suspects were stopped after driving away in a Mercedes with camouflage bags.

'We're waiting for the suspects to break'

Chief Brown said the assumption was all the suspects were working together.

Sorry, this video has expired Video: Live Facebook video shows shots fired with police sheltering behind cars in downtown Dallas (ABC News)

"Working together with rifles, triangulated at elevated positions in different points in the downtown area where the march ended up going," he said.

"So there had to be some speculation from us that there is some knowledge of the route, where you'd be, because how would you know to post up there?

"So we're leaving every motive on the table of how this happened and why it happened, but we're waiting for the suspects to break and let us know what they're doing."

Some of the officers targeted were traffic police and were not wearing Kevlar body armour as they wanted to avoid presenting an aggressive posture at what was supposed to be a peaceful protest.

One of the officers killed was a 43-year-old officer for the Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) named Brent Thompson. He is the first DART officer killed in the line of duty.

Chief Brown said some officers had been "ambushed" and shot, some in the back.

Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings said it was a "heartbreaking morning".

"To say that our police officers put their life on the line everyday is no hyperbole, ladies and gentlemen — it's a reality," Mayor Rawlings said.

Retired Dallas deputy police chief Craig Miller told the ABC the shooting would only increase the tension in Dallas and across the United States.

"This is the bloodiest day in the history of the Dallas police department with regard to law enforcement here in the city of Dallas," he said.

Dallas police had shared a photo on Twitter of a man carrying a rifle on the street, which is legal in Texas. He was taken into custody and later released.

The man, initially identified as a suspect, turned himself in to the first officer he could find as he assumed police would want to talk to him.

President Obama condemns 'calculated, despicable attack'

Rallies were being held in Dallas and several US cities over the most recent fatal police shootings of black men in Minnesota and Louisiana.

Dallas 'beyond anything we've seen' Journalist Sally Sara has covered the Black Lives Matter movement extensively and says "the situation ... in Dallas is beyond anything we've seen before".



The most recent tension rose after the deaths of Philando Castile in Minnesota and Alton Sterling in Louisiana. In addition to the protest in Dallas, there have also been demonstrations in New York's Times Square.



Allegations of racial bias by US police reached fever pitch after the death of black teenager Trayvon Martin in 2012 and public outcry sparked the Black Lives Matter movement, which started as a hashtag on social media.



It has become a catch cry for those who are angry about the disproportionately high number of African-American people who had been killed.



It is, however, much more fluid and organic than something like the civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King Jr in the 1960s and is therefore a harder movement to follow and to really understand.

Philando Castile, 32, was shot dead by a police officer at a traffic stop near Minneapolis on Thursday after being pulled over for a broken taillight.

Another black man, Alton Sterling, died in similar circumstances earlier in the week in Louisiana.

After news of the Dallas shooting came to light, President Barack Obama, in Poland for the NATO Summit, fronted the media and reiterated his stance on assault weapons.

"When people are armed with powerful weapons, unfortunately it makes attacks like these more deadly and tragic," he said.

"And in the days ahead we're going to have to consider those realities as well."

President Obama also said that while the motive of the shooters was not yet known, "there is no possible justification for these types of attacks or any violence against law enforcement".

"We still don't know all of the facts. What we do know is that there has been a vicious, calculated and despicable attack on law enforcement," he said.

ABC/Reuters

Topics: race-relations, community-and-society, law-crime-and-justice, police, murder-and-manslaughter, united-states

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