US President Barack Obama would cut short his trip to the Europe by a day and visit Dallas early next week, the White House said on Friday.
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“There is no possible justification for these kinds of attacks or any violence against law enforcement”, Obama said, speaking from the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation summit in Poland that he is attending.
Obama’s initial remarks after the earlier shootings, which some interpreted as critical of police officers around the nation, could also increase pressure on him to demonstrate sympathy for the slain officers and their families.
Obama called the attacks on Dallas law enforcement “vicious, calculated, and despicable” in a statement this morning.
Snipers opened fire on police officers in the heart of Dallas Thursday evening, killing five officers and injuring six others during protests over two recent fatal police shootings of black men.
Mr Obama argued there is no contradiction between supporting law enforcement and working to see that biases in the justice system are rooted out. “Today is a wrenching reminder of the sacrifices they make for us”, he said.
In a statement just after arriving at the summit just after midnight Warsaw time, and before the Dallas protests erupted into violence, Obama said all Americans should be troubled by the videotaped police shootings of African-American men in Louisiana and Minnesota this week.
The ambush marks the single biggest loss of life for law enforcement in the United States since the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.
The shootings – which left nine injured, seven of them police officers – sparked chaotic scenes of people running for their lives during a march by several hundred demonstrators in the city of 1.2 million, not far from the site where president John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963.
“When people say “Black Lives Matter”, that doesn’t mean blue lives don’t matter”, Obama said referring to the Minnesota and Louisiana shootings. Obama said before the Dallas officers were shot.
“I think everybody who knows me – including, I suspect, the press – understands that … you take this stuff in”.
The events also come during a heated presidential election where issues of gun violence and criminal justice reform have been in the spotlight, and come just hours before presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton was scheduled to give a speech addressing the shootings from earlier in the week.
It was one of a series of often stilted, occasionally productive bilateral meetings that are the bread and butter of big North Atlantic Treaty Organisation summits like the one taking place in Warsaw Friday and Saturday.
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The White House said more details of the president’s newly announced trip to Dallas will be released as they become available.
