Car rams into crowd at US far-right rally
2 cops patrolling the venue killed in helicopter crash
Charlottesville, US,
Aug. 13: A white nationalist rally erupted into deadly violence on Sunday as a car ploughed into a crowd while demonstrators and counterprotesters clashed, as President Donald Trump came under sharp criticism for his tepid response.
The FBI and federal prosecutors have opened a civil rights investigation into the circumstances surrounding the incident that killed one woman and wounded 19 in Charlottesville, Virginia.
After Mr Trump was faulted by fellow Republicans for his apparent refusal to criticise farright hate groups, attorney general Jeff Sessions said that “when such actions arise from racial bigotry and hatred, they betray our core values and cannot be tolerated.”
Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe had already declared a state of emergency to provide more resources to law enforcement when a sedan surged into a crowd of what witnesses said were counter-demonstrators in the picturesque university town.
A 20-year-old, James Alex Fields, Jr, has been charged with second degree murder, malicious wounding and hit-andrun. Two responding police officers were killed in a helicopter crash.
Hundreds had descended on Charlottesville either to march in or rail against a “Unite the Right Rally.” Unrest quickly flared even as riot police and national guard troops flooded the city’s downtown.
White far-right supporters, some wearing hats with Mr Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan and others in riot gear with shields and batons, faced off against counter-protesters.
Mr Trump, speaking from his golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey, said: “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides...It has been going on for a long time in our country.”
Critics focused on Mr Trump apparently equating the violence of white supremacist protesters with that of anti-fascist activists. David Duke, a former “grand wizard” of the Ku Klux Klan who had been a key figure at the rally, urged Mr Trump to “remember it was White Americans who put you in the presidency, not radical leftists.”
Mr Trump was criticised by liberals such as his 2016 election opponent Hillary Clinton, who did not name Mr Trump but tweeted that “Every minute we allow this to persist through tacit encouragement or inaction is a disgrace, & corrosive to our values.”