Racial tensions simmer in US; 200 arrested
More than 200 people were arrested in chaotic scenes during a new night of protests over US police violence towards blacks as authorities yesterday revealed that the Dallas shooter had apparently been plotting a major bomb attack.
Anger around America over the deaths of two black men at the hands of police last week -- the state reason for the black Dallas gunman's deadly rampage targeting white officers -- showed no signs of abating.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. Most of the protests Saturday night into yesterday were peaceful.
But authorities said a full-scale riot broke out in Saint Paul, Minnesota and resulted in 102 arrests. Protesters blocked a freeway and attacked police with rocks, bottles, fireworks, Molotov cocktails and metal bars, police said. Twenty-one officers were injured in the hours-long melee.
It was in a Saint Paul suburb that one of last week's deaths occurred. Both killings were caught on horrific video that has since gone viral. In Baton Rouge, where the other black detainee died, more than 100 protesters were also arrested.
Police said the Dallas ambush shooter Micah Johnson, an Afghanistan war veteran, had taunted police negotiators and scrawled on a wall in his own blood before he was ultimately killed in the standoff.
He had opened fire Thursday evening with a powerful rifle during a peaceful protest against the shooting deaths of the two men in Louisiana and Minnesota, triggering hours of chaos in the downtown section of the big Texas city. A search of Johnson's home turned up bomb-making materials and a manual in which he wrote about military tactics.
Police now believe he had been planning something big long beforehand, and that the two black deaths last week were a trigger that prompted him to act. Police said he had enough expertise and materials to cause a huge blast potentially targetting key landmarks or lawenforcers.
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