MOSCOW, August 17 (RIA Novosti) – US Police fired smoke canisters at the protesters early Sunday morning in the city of Ferguson, Missouri to disperse the crowd, which has protested and intermittently looted for seven straight days after a police officer killed an unarmed African-American teenager, CNN reported.
Several media outlets said that police used tear gas, but a city police spokesman said that smoke canisters were used against the protesters instead after they refused to obey the rules of curfew announced by the authorities on Saturday.
Police have already surrounded the demonstrators, PzFeed news portal reported, noting that shooting was heard in the nearby areas. It remains unknown whether it were the police warning shots or the protesters' attacks. One person has been taken to the hospital, presumably, with a gunshot wound.
The protests in the city began following the August 10 tragedy, when a police officer fatally shot Michael Brown, an 18-year-old African-American man. The incident spurred a week of mass protests in Ferguson, as well as in a number of other cities across the country. Several people were injured in clashes with police that used rubber bullets to disperse the angry crowd.
About a week later, local police identified the officer who shot Brown as Darren Wilson. The teenager was said to have been suspected in a convenience-store robbery. At a press conference earlier this week, authorities, however, said the officer was not aware of the fact at the time. According to the city's police chief, Brown was stopped because he was “walking down the middle of the street blocking traffic.”
US President Barack Obama earlier ordered the FBI and the Department of Justice to join the probe. At least 40 FBI agents have already arrived in Ferguson to conduct an investigation and have been questioning all potential eyewitnesses to the killing and searching for any evidence related to the case.
