Five Dallas police officers were killed and at least six more injured in a coordinated sniper attack during an anti-police brutality protest Thursday, an explosion of violence that President Obama declared a “vicious, calculated and despicable attack on law enforcement.”
Obama, speaking from at a NATO summit in Poland, said America is “horrified” over the shootings and asked all Americans to pray for the fallen officers and their families.
“There’s no possible justification for these kinds of attacks or any violence against law enforcement,” Obama said, hours after a pre-attack speech in which he cited two racially charged police shootings earlier in the week and called for an end to bias in law enforcement.
Dallas Police Chief David Brown said it appeaars four rifle-toting suspects were working together, "triangulating at different positions" as protesters marched through the streets of Dallas. The protest was one of several around the country, prompted by police shootings of black men in Louisiana and Miesota.
Three suspects were in custody and another who had holed up in a parking garage killed himself. Brown said late Thursday police do not know if all of the shooters had been accounted for. One woman was taken into custody near the garage and two men were being questioned after police pursued their vehicle away from the crime scene.
The suspect who killed himself had claimed that bombs had been set around the city, and much of downtown Dallas was locked down while police searched. He died after first barricading himself in at the community college parking garage, firing at police and waing the "the end is coming," according to KDFW-TV.
Brown offered no possible motive or identities for the suspects, but a news conference was scheduled for Friday moing.
One of the cops killed was identified as Dallas Areat Rapid Transit Police Officer Brent Thompson, 43. He is the first DART officer to be killed in the line of duty. The others were picked off as the stood guard during the protest.
Brown said multiple shooters positioned themselves in two parking garages in downtown Dallas and "plaed to injure and kill as many law enforcement officers as they could."
A Dallas police source estimated to Fox News that at least 60 rounds were fired over a "large kill zone." The source added that the shooting would have required considerable plaing.
"It's a heartbreaking moment for the city of Dallas," Mayor Mike Rawlings said. "I ask everybody focus on one thing right now, and that is Dallas police officers, their families, those that are deceased [and] those that are in the hospital fighting for their lives."
Witness Carlos Harris told the Dallas Moing News the gunfire was "strategic. It was tap-tap-pause. Tap-tap-pause."
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott released a statement saying he has directed the Texas Department of Public Safety director to offer "whatever assistance the City of Dallas needs at this time."
"In times like this we must remember -- and emphasize -- the importance of uniting as Americans," Abbott said.
The protesters had gathered after a Miesota officer on Wednesday fatally shot Philando Castile while he was in a car with a woman and a child in a St. Paul suburb. The aftermath of the shooting was purportedly livestreamed in a widely shared Facebook video.
A day earlier, Alton Sterling was shot in Louisiana after being pied to the pavement by two white officers. That, too, was captured on a cellphone video.
Other protests across the U.S. on Thursday were peaceful. In midtown Manhattan, protesters first gathered in Union Square Park. In Miesota, where Castile was shot, hundreds of protesters marched in the rain from a vigil to the goveor's official residence. Protesters also marched in Atlanta, Chicago and Philadelphia.
Anti-police protests have roiled the nation in each of the last two summers following controversial police shootings, including the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and last Aprils death of Fraddie Gray while in custody of Baltimore police.
Although a Department of Justice investigation cleared the police officer who shot Brown, and of the six Baltimore police officers charged in Gray's death, two have been acquitted, one's case was declared a mistrial and three more face trial.
Fox News' Bret Baier and the Associated Press contributed to this report.