2 gunmen shot dead at cartoon event in Texas

The Texas police killed two gunmen who opened fire on Sunday outside an exhibit of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad that was organised by a group described as anti-Islamic and billed as a free-speech event.

Citing a senior FBI official, ABC News identified one of the gunmen as Elton Simpson, a man who lives in Arizona and was the target of a terror investigation. FBI officers and a bomb crew were searching Simpson’s Phoenix home.

Phoenix’s KPHO TV reported that the second man lived in the same apartment area as Simpson, the Autumn Ridge Apartments. He was not recognized, and the other man’s apartment was searched, the station said.

FBI spokeswoman Katherine Chaumont in Dallas said she had no information about the suspects. An FBI proof team was still working, she wrote in an email.

The shooting in a Dallas suburb was an echo of past attacks or threats in other Western countries against art depicting the Prophet Mohammad. Gunmen killed 12 people in the Paris offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, in January,  in what it said was revenge for its cartoons.

The attack on Sunday took place in a parking lot of the Curtis Culwell Center, an indoor area in Garland, northeast of Dallas. A polarising Dutch politician, Geert Wilders, and anti-Islamic campaigner who is on an Al-Qaida hit list, was among the speakers at the event.