AKIPRESS.COM - President of the United States Barack Obama has called for national unity after the killing of three police officers in Baton Rouge, and warned against using the deadly event to inflame political fighting during a charged political campaign, says in-cyprus.com.

“We have our divisions and they are not new,” Obama said in a press conference. “That is why it is so important that… everyone right now focus on words and actions that can unite this country further.”

“We don’t need inflammatory rhetoric,” he said.

A decorated ex-U.S. Marine sergeant opened fire on police in Baton Rouge on Sunday, killing three officers, nearly two weeks after the fatal police shooting of a black man there sparked nationwide protests, one of them shattered by the massacre of five Dallas policemen.

The Baton Rouge suspect, dressed in black and armed with a rifle, was himself shot to death minutes later in a gunfight with police who converged on the scene of a confrontation that Mayor Kip Holden said began as an “ambush-style” attack on officers.

Two Baton Rouge Police Department officers and one sheriff’s deputy were killed, and one sheriff’s deputy was critically wounded. Another police officer and one other deputy suffered less severe wounds and were expected to survive.

Colonel Mike Edmonson, superintendent of the Louisiana State Police, told a news conference the gunman was believed to have acted alone, contrary to early reports that police may have been looking for other shooters.