Police Kill Two Gunmen at U.S. Mohammed Cartoon Event

A Texas traffic policeman shot dead two suspected Islamist gunmen with his pistol after they opened fire with assault rifles and tried to storm an event staged by an anti-Muslim group, police said Monday.

There was no confirmed claim of responsibility for Sunday's failed assault, but an FBI official told U.S. media that one of the attackers had been previously investigated as an alleged would-be jihadist militant.

ABC news, citing an FBI official, said Monday that agents had raided an apartment in Phoenix, Arizona thought to belong to Elton Simpson, allegedly one of the slain gunmen.

Court documents seen by AFP show Simpson was sentenced to three years probation in 2011 for lying to federal agents investigating him on suspicion of planning to travel to Somalia to fight with jihadists.

The White House said President Barack Obama had been briefed on the investigation, which Texas police said was ongoing.

"There is no form of expression that justifies an act of violence,"  White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.

Commentators were quick to draw parallels to a January shooting at the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo in Paris that killed 12 people and wounded 11 more.

The American Freedom Defense Initiative, a group listed by civil rights watchdog the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-Muslim hate group, had organized the event in Garland, a suburb of Dallas. 

- Drawings of the prophet - 

At the event, attended by Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilders and AFDI co-founder Pamela Geller, supporters held an exhibition of entries to a competition to draw cartoon caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed.

Many Muslims find drawings of the prophet to be disrespectful or outright blasphemous, and such cartoons have been cited by Islamists as motivation in several previous attacks.

Police said two men, wearing body armor and toting assault rifles, drove up to the conference, jumped out and opened fire on an unarmed security guard.

Garland police spokesman Joe Harn told reporters the guard was shot in the ankle and that a traffic police officer in the vicinity responded, taking down the two better-armed assailants.

"With what he was faced with and his reaction and his shooting with a pistol, he did a good job," Harn said. "And under the fire that he was put under, he did a very good job. And probably saved lives."

A SWAT team on duty to provide back-up security for the controversial event secured the area, and bomb squad officers confirmed that there were no explosives in the car.

Wilders told AFP in an e-mail that he was concerned he may have been targeted because he, like one of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists killed in January, figures on a hit list circulated by al-Qaida supporters.

"I am shocked. I just spoke for half an hour about the cartoons, Islam and freedom of speech and I had just left the premises," he said.

"This is an attack on the liberties of all of us!" 

The Dutch politician said he would return to the Netherlands on Monday but he still plans to come back to the United States next week for another speaking engagement.

- 'War on free speech' - 

On Twitter, jihadist Abu Hussain Al-Britani, who the private terror watchdog SITE identified as British IS fighter Junaid Hussain, described the gunmen as "two of our brothers." 

About 200 people were present at the event in Garland.

U.S. Representative Michael McCaul of Texas, who also is the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, deplored the attack by what he called "fanatics."

"From the capitals of Europe to the streets of Garland, Texas, we have been confronted by attackers who cannot tolerate our open society," he said. 

AFDI had offered a $10,000 prize for the winner of the cartoon contest that had been billed as a "free speech" event.

Geller called the shooting a "war on free speech."

"What are we going to do? Are we going to surrender to these monsters?" she wrote on her website. "The war is here."