Texas police shoot dead two gunmen at Prophet (PBUH) caricature exhibit

GARLAND:

Texas police shot dead two gunmen who opened fire at an exhibit near Dallas of caricatures of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) organised by an anti-Islam group, authorities said on Sunday.

The shooting echoed past attacks or threats in other Western countries against art depicting the Holy Prophet (PBUH).

In January, gunmen killed 12 people in the Paris offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in revenge for its cartoons.

Sunday’s attack took place shortly before 7 pm in a parking lot of the Curtis Culwell Center, an indoor arena in the suburb of Garland, northeast of Dallas.

Geert Wilders, a polarising Dutch politician and anti-Islamic campaigner who is on a militant hit list, was among the speakers at the event.

Police said they had not immediately determined the identity of the two gunmen or whether they were linked to critics of the event who had branded it anti-Islamic.

“I have no idea who they are, other than they’re dead and in the street,” city police spokesman, officer Joe Harn, told Reuters.

As a precaution, police were examining the suspects’ car for any explosives that might be in the vehicle, Harn added.

The exhibit was organised by Pamela Geller, president of the American Freedom Defence Initiative (AFDI). Her organisation, which is described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group, has sponsored anti-Islamic advertising campaigns in transit systems across the country.

Organisers said the exhibit was an event to promote freedom of expression.

Depictions of the Prophet are viewed as offensive in Islam, and Western art depicting Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) has sometimes angered Muslims and provoked threats from radicals.

Charlie Hebdo, the French magazine attacked in January, had printed cartoons of the Prophet (PBUH).

In Sunday’s incident, the two armed suspects drove up to the front of the building in a car as the event was coming to an end, and began shooting at a security officer, striking him in the leg, police and city officials said.

Garland police officers who were on the scene assisting with security then exchanged fire with the gunmen, and both suspects were shot dead, Harn said.

The security officer was treated at a local hospital and later released, he said.

No one else was injured.

Most of the people attending the event were still inside the arena when the violence unfolded and were unaware of what had occurred until police came into the building and advised everyone to remain indoors because of a shooting.

“The first suspect was shot immediately. The second suspect was shot and wounded, reached for his back pack. Of course, officers not knowing what was in the backpack shot him again. He was killed,” Garland Mayor Douglas Athas told CNN.

The identities of Sunday’s shooters have yet to be confirmed, but the SITE Intelligence Group reported that a self-styled Islamic State (IS) fighter claimed on Twitter that the shooting was carried out by two pro-IS individuals.

In a series of tweets, a jihadist named as Abu Hussain AlBritani, which SITE said was British IS fighter Junaid Hussain, claimed that “2 of our brothers just opened fire” at the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) caricature exhibition in Texas.

“They Thought They Was Safe In Texas From The Soldiers of The Islamic State,” added the tweet.