Two National Guard soldiers are critically injured after being gunned down in Washington DC, less than two blocks from the White House, in what the city’s mayor called a “targeted shooting”.
Police said a lone suspect opened fire on two National Guard members from West Virginia on Wednesday afternoon, before being subdued by other National Guard nearby who had heard the gunfire.
An angry President Donald Trump, who was in Florida at the time, said the alleged gunman was an Afghan national who entered the US in September 2021.
He vowed his administration would ensure the suspect “pays the steepest possible price” for “an act of evil, an act of hatred and an act of terror”.
The Department of Homeland Security named the suspect in a press release as Rahmanullah Lakamal, “a criminal alien from Afghanistan”. His immigration status was unclear.
Tens of thousands of Afghans entered the US under special immigration protections following the chaotic US withdrawal from that country in 2021 under former President Joe Biden.
“We must now re-examine every alien who has entered our country from Afghanistan under Biden,” said Trump in a live address on Wednesday night.
US Citizenship and Immigration Services said it had halted processing of all Afghan immigration requests pending a review of vetting protocols.
A statement from Joint Task Force DC, which is co-ordinating the National Guard deployments to the nation’s capital, said the attack took place at around 14:15 EST (17:15 GMT) on Wednesday near the Farragut Square Metro Station.
The soldiers were on a high-visibility patrol near the corner of 17th and I streets, a busy lunch spot for office workers.
FBI Director Kash Patel – whose agency is leading the investigation – told a news conference the soldiers were “brazenly attacked in a horrendous act of violence”.
Metropolitan Police Assistant Chief Jeff Carroll said the suspect “came around the corner” and “immediately started firing a firearm”.
He said the soldiers had been “ambushed”.
Other National Guard members nearby heard the gunfire and responded, he said.
“They actually were able to intervene and to kind of hold down the suspect, after he had been shot, on the ground until law enforcement got there within moments,” Carroll said.
The suspect was shot four times, law enforcement sources told CBS.
The suspect was not co-operating with authorities, law enforcement sources told CBS on Wednesday night.
President Trump – who is at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach – vowed to punish the attacker.
“The animal that shot the two National Guardsmen, with both being critically wounded, and now in two separate hospitals, is also severely wounded, but regardless, will pay a very steep price,” he wrote on Truth Social.
“God bless our Great National Guard, and all of our Military and Law Enforcement,” he added.
US Vice-President JD Vance, who was addressing troops in Kentucky at the time of the attack, urged “everybody who’s a person of faith” to pray for the victims.
BBC
