2 US National Guards members shot

Washington: Two West Virginia National Guard members who deployed to the nation's capital were shot Wednesday afternoon just blocks from the White House in a brazen act of violence that the mayor described as a targeted attack.

FBI Director Kash Patel and Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser said they were hospitalised in critical condition.

The rare shooting of National Guard members, on the day before Thanksgiving, comes as the presence of the troops in the nation's capital and other cities around the country has been a flashpoint issue for months, fuelling court fights and a broader public policy debate about the Trump administration's use of the military to combat what officials cast as an out-of-control crime problem.

A suspect who was in custody also was shot and had wounds that were not believed to be life-threatening, according to a law enforcement official who was not authorised to discuss the matter publicly and spoke to AP on condition of anonymity. The 29-year-old suspect, an Afghan national, entered the US in 2021 through Operation Allies Welcome, a Biden administration programme that evacuated and resettled tens of thousands of Afghans after the US withdrawal from the country, officials said.

The initiative brought roughly 76,000 people to the US, many of whom had worked alongside US troops and diplomats as interpreters and translators. It has since faced intense scrutiny from Trump and his allies, congressional Republicans and some government watchdogs over gaps in the vetting process and the speed of admissions, even as advocates say it offered a lifeline to people at risk of Taliban reprisals.