A shooter ambushed firefighters responding to a blaze in an Idaho mountain group on Sunday, killing at the very least two individuals and unleashing barrages of gunfire over a number of hours in an assault the governor known as a “heinous” assault.
The Kootenai County Sheriff’s Workplace stated crews responded to a fireplace at Canfield Mountain at about 1:30 p.m. native time, and gunshots have been reported a few half hour later.
Sheriff Bob Norris instructed reporters that officers did not know if anybody else was shot.
“We do not know what number of suspects are up there, and we do not know what number of casualties there are,” Norris stated. “We’re actively taking fireplace sniper as we converse.”
Individuals are nonetheless coming off the mountain, the sheriff stated, so it “can be secure to imagine” that others are nonetheless up there.
Idaho Gov. Brad Little stated “a number of” firefighters have been attacked.
“This can be a heinous direct assault on our courageous firefighters,” Little stated on the social media platform X. “I ask all Idahoans to hope for them and their households as we wait to be taught extra.”
The sheriff’s workplace in neighbouring Soshone County stated on Fb that authorities have been “coping with an lively shooter state of affairs the place the shooter continues to be at massive.”
An alert by the Kootenai County Emergency Administration Workplace requested individuals to keep away from the realm round Canfield Mountain Trailhead and Nettleton Gulch Street, about 6.5 kilometres north of downtown Coeur d’Alene.
The hearth was nonetheless lively, Norris stated.
“It may preserve burning,” he stated. “Cannot put any assets on it proper now.”
No extra particulars have been supplied.
Coeur d’Alene is a metropolis of 55,000 residents close to the border with Washington state. Canfield Mountain is a well-liked mountaineering and biking space on the outskirts of the northern Idaho metropolis, coated with bushes and heavy brush and crisscrossed with trails.
