Washington // A suspect in shootings that killed five Dallas police officers has died after a tense standoff with police in a downtown garage, US media reported, citing law enforcement sources.
Another six police officers and a civilian were killed on Friday in what media called the deadliest day for law enforcement since September 11, 2011.
CNN cited a police source as saying that the suspect was killed, though some local media outlets said the suspect had shot himself.
Police traded fire with the suspect into the early hours of Friday the garage. CNN reported that a Swat team of elite police marksmen and bomb-sniffing dogs had been deployed to the scene and stun grenades were used.
Police chief David Brown said earlier that the suspect had “told our negotiators that the end is coming, and he is 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.”
A police spokesman later announced that sweeps of the central Dallas area had found no explosives.
Three others suspects were taken into custody – a woman and two men found with camouflage bags in a car, though Mr Brown had warned there were probably more suspects.
He said police believed at least two snipers had shot at police ambush-style from high points during an otherwise peaceful protest against police shootings of black men after two African Americans were killed elsewhere in the country this week.
“Just because we say black lives matter doesn’t mean blue lives don’t matter,” the US preisdent Barack Obama said after arriving in Warsaw for a Nato summit.
Dallas police Maj Max Geron said on Twitter that officers were conducting “extensive” sweeps across the downtown area of the usually bustling Texas city.
The area was on lockdown, with no bus or rail service and flight restrictions.
Outside Parkland Hospital, police saluted their fellow officers who lost their lives or were wounded in the shooting.
Other people later joined the officers for an impromptu vigil, their hands grasped behind their backs.
* Agence France-Presse