On Sunday night, protests decrying the police killing of black Minneapolis man George Floyd continued, as over 50 Secret Service agents were injured in clashes outside the White House premises.
Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in 140 cities across the US prompting the National Guard to be deployed to calm tensions down, as the US hasn’t seen unparalleled civil unrest like this since the 1968 assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Despite the heavy national guard presence, protesters refused to be deterred as 4,100 people have been arrested this weekend alone, while protesters in Philadelphia hurled rocks and Molotov cocktails at police, stores in New York and San Francisco were raided, and fires being ignited just outside the White House.
On Sunday night, in Washington D.C. a fire was set ablaze in the historic St. John’s Episcopal Church and Lafayette Park just in front of the White House just as Secret service agents assembled and formed a defence line just in front of the White House.
The fire at St. John’s cathedral, which was opened in 1816 at Washington D.C was put out by 11pm.
The fire at Lafayette Park, located just in front of the White House, started after a protester set a US flag on fire sending smoke into the air as more than 1,000 gathered and raised their fists in solidarity.
40 cities have now imposed curfews while Washington state governor Jay Inslee has blasted the riots ‘illegal and dangerous’ but adding they should not ‘detract from the anger so many feel at the deep injustice laid so ugly and bare by the death of George Floyd’.
According to multiple reports by US media houses, at least five people have been killed in protest violence in Detroit and Indianapolis while in Omaha a 22-year-old black protester was killed in a struggle with a local business owner.
In Louisville, a man was shot dead by law enforcement officers, but it was not clear if he was shot as a result of the protests.
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