A gunman shot dead two New York City police officers in what officials called an "assassination", hours after warning on social media that he planned an attack in retribution for recent U.S. police killings of unarmed black men, Reuters reported. Mayor Bill de Blasio on Sunday ordered flags flown at half staff around the city. New York City's main police union harshly criticized the city's first Democratic mayor in two decades for being insufficiently supportive of the department during recent waves of anti-police violence. The gunman, 28-year-old Ismaaiyl Abdula Brinsley, traveled from Baltimore, where police said he had shot and wounded his girlfriend, to New York and during the day posted on the social media service Instagram that he would be "putting wings on pigs today," using an anti-police slur. The two New York City Police Department officers, Rafael Ramos, 40, and Wenjian Liu, 32, had no time to react when Brinsley appeared next to their vehicle, and shot both officers with a silver semi-automatic handgun, said NYPD Police Commissioner William Bratton. -- SPA 21:09 LOCAL TIME 18:09 GMT تغريد
