Police in Baton Rouge, Lousiana (Getty Images)

Three police officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana were fatally shot and three other officers were injured when responding to a call about a “suspicious person walking down Airline Highway with an assault rifle.” One suspect was shot dead while two others are believed to be at large.

This comes after two weeks of disturbing incidents involving law enforcement: A series of fatal shootings of black men by the police—Alton Sterling in Baltimore; Delrawn Small in New York City; and Philando Castile in Minnesota—and the deaths of five police officers in Dallas during an otherwise peaceful Black Live Matter protest.

President Obama released a statement calling the shooting “cowardly and reprehensible”:

I condemn, in the strongest sense of the word, the attack on law enforcement in Baton Rouge. For the second time in two weeks, police officers who put their lives on the line for ours every day were doing their job when they were killed in a cowardly and reprehensible assault. These are attacks on public servants, on the rule of law, and on civilized society, and they have to stop.

I’ve offered my full support, and the full support of the federal government, to Governor Edwards, Mayor Holden, the Sheriff’s Office, and the Baton Rouge Police Department. And make no mistake – justice will be done.

We may not yet know the motives for this attack, but I want to be clear: there is no justification for violence against law enforcement. None. These attacks are the work of cowards who speak for no one. They right no wrongs. They advance no causes. The officers in Baton Rouge; the officers in Dallas – they were our fellow Americans, part of our community, part of our country, with people who loved and needed them, and who need us now – all of us – to be at our best.

Today, on the Lord’s day, all of us stand united in prayer with the people of Baton Rouge, with the police officers who’ve been wounded, and with the grieving families of the fallen. May God bless them all.

The Baton Rouge newspaper The Advocate has details about how the police responded to the shooting and the mayhem that ensued; a police officer was yelling, “Shots fired, officer down, shots fired, officer down! Got a city officer down, shots fired! Shots fired on Airline!” and another saying, “I don’t know where he’s f*** shooting from.”

CNN reports that the suspect who was shot dead was wearing all black and a mask.