OTTAWA — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is expressing sympathy over the sniper deaths of five police officers in Dallas.
In a tweet, Trudeau says Canadians are shocked by the attacks and says Canada's solidarity is with all victims of violence on this tragic week.
Canadians are shocked by the cowardly attacks against police in Dallas. Our solidarity is with all victims of violence on this tragic week.
— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) July 8, 2016
Snipers gunned down five Dallas police officers and wounded six others during a peaceful protest over fatal police shootings of black men in other states, police said, in bloodshed evoking the trauma of the nation's tumultuous civil rights era.
Toronto police chief Mark Saunders also tweeted out his force's heartfelt sympathies, thoughts and prayers to the Dallas police department.
DALLAS SHOOTING KILLS FIVE POLICE OFFICERS; SUSPECTED ATTACKER WAS ARMY VETERAN
Protests against encounter-style police killings of an African American in a suburb here and another in Louisiana spiralled into a terrorist attack that took the lives of five police officers in distant Dallas as a polarised nation prepared for conventions to nominate Presidential candidates.
Dallas police chief David Brown announced on Friday that a hate-fuelled sniper who said that he wanted to kill white people, particularly police, was taken out using a robot to bomb him.
The nation has been on edge since the Dallas attack and as Brown was addressing the media in Dallas, the US Capitol, the seat of the Congress in Washington, was put under a lock down for a while.
The end to the Dallas attack came after the shooter, later identified as 25-year-old Micah Xavier Johnson, was cornered in a parking garage, talked to a negotiator even as he exchanged fire with police for over 45 minutes, Brown said.
He said the suspect told the negotiator that he was acting alone and did not have ties to any organisation.
Media reports said Johnson had served with the US Army Reserve, a force similar to the Territorial Army that is called up for active duty in war time or during emergencies.
Brown said that three others, including a woman, were in custody and officials were investigating the sniper's possible links. Two of them were captured after a car chase.
Officials initially said there were several snipers, but Brown said at his Friday news conference that it appeared there was only one. This heightens the threat of lone wolf attacks.
The terrorist attack was unleashed on police as a multi-ethnic protest in Dallas against the police killings of African Americans - one of several demonstrations around the nation - was winding down on Thursday night.
The Dallas attacks followed the killings by police of an African American man in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on Tuesday and in the Minnesota suburb of Falcon Heights on Wednesday night.
Attorney General: I ask you, do not let this week precipitate a new normal in this country. https://t.co/UgUblj5fRF https://t.co/aw1PxfpkYd
— The Situation Room (@CNNSitRoom) July 8, 2016
The aftermath of the Minnesota shooting was captured in a chilling video by the girlfriend of the victim, Philando Castile, sitting next to him in a car moments after he was shot with a police officer brandishing a gun as he was bleeding to death.
Going viral, it set off a wave of outrage across the nation.
Castile, a school meals programme supervisor, was shot after they were stopped for driving with a tail light that was not working.
Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton acknowledged that race may have had a role in the shooting. "I think all of us in Minnesota are forced to confront that this kind of racism exists," he told reporters.
On Tuesday, a DVD seller, Alton Sterling, was shot by police in Baton Rouge in the southern state of Louisiana. The killing of 37-year-old Alton Sterling was captured on a cellphone by a bystander and on a car's dashboard camera.
The Democratic Party's national convention to officially nominate Hillary Clinton as the party's candidate for the November presidential election is only nine days away and the subject of race has divided the public discourse.
Clinton and Republican Party's Donald Trump tweeted their condolences to the families of the police killed. The killing of African Americans by police and the terrorist attack on police have the potential to heighten the polarisation.
Public figures have been scrambling to defuse the fallouts, first from the killing of African Americans and now from the deadly attacks on police, said to be the worst on public safety personnel since 9/11 almost 15 years ago.
President Barack Obama, who was in Warsaw for a NATO summit, denounced the Dallas attack as "vicious, calculated, despicable" and said, "Let's be clear: There is no possible justification."
The Black Lives movement that has been spearheading the protests against police brutality distanced itself from the Dallas attacker, tweeting: "Black Lives Matter advocates dignity, justice and freedom. Not murder."
"Killers, murderers, hijacked a peaceful protest and used it as a staging ground to kill and target police," said William Barber, a leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, the premier African American civil rights organisation. "These police were doing their jobs. They were watching over children and families."
In a hair-splitting attempt to distinguish it from attacks Islamic radicals, officials and the US have pointedly refrained from calling the Dallas mass shooting a terrorist incident, even though it had all the hallmarks of one.
When terrorism struck Dallas, live images on TV showed African American, Latino, Asian and white police responding hand in hand, rushing into the arc of sniper fire to protect civilians.
Brown, himself an African American, called his police "some of the bravest people you want to be associated with" who "risk their lives to protect our democracy".
Johnson said he was "upset about the recent police killings a was upset about 'Black Lives Matter;' was upset about white people," Brown said. "He wanted to kill white people, especially officers."
CNN quoted official sources as saying that nothing in Johnson's background gave any hint that he could carry out such an attack.
Only one of the five police officers has been identified. He had served in Iraq and Afghanistan training local police, media reports said. A wounded police officer was a woman.
The attacks on police occurred close to the site of the assassination of Presdient John Kennedy in 1963.
