NEW YORK/WASHINGTON
Two police officers who were shot and wounded early Thursday in Ferguson, Missouri, have been released from the hospital, officials said.
"Both were in serious condition before being released from Barnes Jewish Hospital," St. Louis County Police said in a Facebook post.
The shooting of the officers, who have not been identified, occurred during a night of renewed protests in Ferguson. The St. Louis suburb's police chief resigned earlier in the day in the wake of the release of a scathing federal report that catalogued widespread racial discrimination against blacks in Ferguson.
St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar said in a press conference that "three or four shots ring out" before the officers were injured.
One officer, 41, was shot in his right shoulder; the other, 32, just below his right eye, Belmar said.
Meanwhile, law enforcement officers raided a home in Ferguson on Thursday morning in search of suspects, local media reported.
When the operation was over, three individuals were being questioned by police, according to CNN, citing a police spokesperson.
Police chief Thomas Jackson is the sixth city official to step down in the wake of the damning Justice Department report.
President Barack Obama condemned the attack on Twitter. "Violence against police is unacceptable," he said.
"Path to justice is one all of us must travel together," he added in a tweet on the White House’s Twitter account signed with his initials, indicating he personally wrote the message.
Attorney General Eric Holder separately called the attack a "heinous assault" that was "inexcusable and repugnant."
"Such senseless acts of violence threaten the very reforms that non-violent protesters in Ferguson and around the country have been working towards for the past several months," he said.
Ferguson became a focal point of a national debate on race relations and police brutality following the shooting death of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown by white police officer Darren Wilson.
A Missouri grand jury and the Justice Department cleared the officer in the shooting, but a separate federal investigation found systematic racial bias in the city's policing tactics.
Holder had earlier said the Justice Department would reform the Ferguson police force and even consider dismantling it.
Ferguson is roughly two-thirds black, but its police force is nearly all white.
