Simmering tensions returned to the small Missouri town of Ferguson amid a massive manhunt for the shooter of two white police officers during a demonstration over a blistering official report on police abuse and racial bias.
Several Ferguson officials, including the police chief Thomas Jackson, have resigned after a Department of Justice report found a pattern of racially-biased policing in the city where a White police officer had shot dead an unarmed black teenager last August.
One of the officers was shot in the shoulder and another in the face at around midnight local time on Wednesday outside Ferguson police headquarters, as protests began to wind down, police said Thursday.
Both officers survived and were released from the hospital Thursday evening and a manhunt was underway for suspects.
A $10,000 reward has been offered for information leading to the arrests of the shooter or shooters.
On Thursday evening, a group of clergy and demonstrators lit candles and held a prayer vigil not far from the police station, according to NBC News.
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The shootings were condemned by the parents of Michael Brown, the black teenager who was shot dead last August.
They called the shootings "senseless" and blasted what they called "stand-alone agitators" attempting to derail peaceful protests.
US Attorney General Eric Holder called it a "disgusting and cowardly attack" carried out by "a damn punk".
"On Thursday, Ferguson again began to resemble the city under siege that it was for parts of last summer and fall, with long stretches of streets cordoned off by yellow police tape and large police sport utility vehicles lining the roads," the New York Times reported.
Saying "The Problem Is Bigger Than Ferguson" the Times said the Justice Department's "expose of the bigoted law enforcement practices" at play in Ferguson "has rightly led to an exodus of officials from the town government".
"The housecleaning among the political leadership in Ferguson is a necessary step," it said. "But the illegal and discriminatory measures uncovered by the Justice Department are not limited to that troubled municipality."
"Ferguson's perverted system of justice is not unique in the county," said the Times citing the Justice Department's top civil rights prosecutor, Vanita Gupta.
Gupta, it noted, had pointed out that "Ferguson is one dot in the state, and there are many municipalities in the region engaged in the same practices a mile away".
In a similar vein, the Washington Post asked "why are protesters still so angry" when "reforms are slowly emerging in Ferguson".
"Steps taken to improve the treatment of African Americans in the St. Louis suburb have yet to soothe the tensions that flared last summer" over the shooting of Brown, it said.
"What's more, by exposing the ugly details of racial bias among Ferguson officials - and revealing new evidence of widespread civil rights violations - the Justice Department report could be fuelling a fresh wave of fury," the Post said.
"We're headed in the right direction, but the region has to heal. Things are very, very raw right now," John Gaskin III, an activist who is also a member of the St. Louis County National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP), was quoted as saying.
(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)