Three suspects in custody; massive manhunt for a fourth is underway.*

Editor’s Note: According to the Dallas police press conference this morning there is only one suspect. Other arrests turned out to be in error. He has been positively identified as Micah X. Johnson, with no known associations with terrorist or Black Lives Matter.

Staff / AlterNet

Dallas police officers were ambushed by snipers on Thursday night after a peaceful protest by Black Lives Matter prompted by the killing by police of black men in the past 48 hours in Louisiana and Minnesota.

Dallas police report that 11 officers were shot and five have died. Reportedly, one civilian was also shot.

Three suspects are in custody and Dallas police have exchanged fire with a fourth in a parking garage.*

A suspicious package is reportedly being secured by bomb squads.

Per Washington Post:

Dallas Police Chief David Brown said there may be more persons involved in the attack. He believes the four suspects worked together with rifles, “triangulated at elevated positions at difference places in the downtown area” to attack police officers. 

The suspect in the El Centro garage said “there are bombs all over this place, in the garage and downtown,” according to Brown. FBI and ATV are on scene, canvassing for explosives. A suspicious package was found, and is being examined by the Dallas Police bomb squad.

“We are being very careful with our tactics, so we don’t injure or put any of our citizen’s in harm’s way,” he said. 

Two of the suspects* in custody were seen climbing into a black Mercedes with a camouflaged bag before speeding off. They were apprehended in the Oak Cliff area, a suburb of Dallas.

The third suspect in custody was near the El Centro garage.

Per the Dallas Morning News:

Dallas police released images of a man they called a suspect less than two hours after shooting during a downtown Dallas rally that left four officers dead and several others injured.

But video tweeted by a Dallas Morning News photographer after shots were fired showed the  man standing with a crowd of protesters, and his brother immediately declared on a television interview that he wasn’t a shooter.

Cory Hughes said that the man in the photos is his brother, Mark Hughes. 

He said his brother brought an unloaded rifle to the rally and, when the shooting started, Cory told Mark to hand the gun to a police officer so he wouldn’t be mistaken for the shooter, and Mark did.