As hundreds of protesters, raged by the death of George Floyd, gathered outside the White House on Friday night in Washington DC, US President Donald Trump was briefly taken to an underground bunker, media reports said.
As the protests turned violent with agitated people throwing bricks and bottles and shouting curses at Trump, the “Secret Service agents abruptly rushed the president to the underground bunker used in the past during terrorist attacks”, the New York Times reported.
The shocking videotaped death last Monday of an unarmed black man, George Floyd, at the hands of police in Minneapolis ignited the nationwide wave of outrage over law enforcement’s repeated use of lethal force against unarmed African Americans.
Floyd stopped breathing after Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes. Chauvin has been charged with third-degree murder; three other officers with him have been fired but for now face no charges.
Floyd’s death has sparked unrest and protests in dozens of cities across the US, including Washington DC.
Meanwhile, amid the chaos and continuing protests, curfew was declared in as many as 40 cities and Washington DC across the United States on Sunday.
According to the CNN, approximately 5,000 National Guard members have been activated in 15 states and Washington DC with another 2,000 on standby.
President Trump has been continuously criticized by the protesters over his response to George Floyd’s death after the video of unarmed Floyd killed by a police officer began spreading on social media.
As the Trump administration branded instigators of five nights of rioting as domestic terrorists, there were more confrontations between protesters and police and fresh outbreaks of looting.
While there was no immediate repeat of the large-scale violence that has rocked cities in recent days, looters ransacked stores in a neighborhood of Philadelphia.
And in the Los Angeles suburb of Santa Monica, looting was reported at stores in a popular beach side shopping center with people running out of stores that had been broken into.
Officials in LA — a city scarred by riots over the police beating of Rodney King nearly three decades ago — imposed a curfew from 4:00 pm Sunday until dawn.
“Please, use your discretion and go early, go home, stay home and help us make sure that those who want to change this conversation from being about racial justice to be about burning things and looting things, don’t win the day,” the city’s mayor Eric Garcetti said on CNN.
Meanwhile, the widespread resort to uniformed National Guards units is rare, and it evoked disturbing memories of the rioting in US cities in 1967 and 1968 in a turbulent time of protest over racial and economic disparities.
“Congratulations to our National Guard for the great job they did immediately upon arriving in Minneapolis, Minnesota, last night,” President Donald Trump had said in a tweet while adding that they “should be used in other States before it is too late!”
Trump has blamed the extreme left for the violence, saying he planned to designate a group known as Antifa as a terrorist organization.
Joe Biden, Trump’s opponent in November’s presidential election, meanwhile, visited the scene of one anti-racism protest.
“We are a nation in pain right now, but we must not allow this pain to destroy us,” Biden wrote on Twitter, posting a picture of him speaking with a black family at the site where protesters had gathered in Delaware on Saturday night.
The death of Floyd has triggered protests beyond the US, with hundreds rallying outside the US embassy in London in solidarity.
In Germany, England football international Jadon Sancho marked one of his three goals for Borussia Dortmund against Paderborn by lifting his jersey to reveal a T-shirt bearing the words “Justice for George Floyd”.
(With agency inputs)