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Man drives into US protesters and shoots one of them

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Police arrest driver and recover a weapon; injured man in stable condition

SAN FRANCISCO: One person was shot after a man with a gun drove into a crowd of anti-racism protesters in the northwestern US city of Seattle on Sunday night, emergency services said.

Footage broadcast by local television station Q13Fox showed the man carrying a pistol getting out of a car near the Seattle Police Department's East Precinct as protesters screamed and fled.

The man strides toward the demonstrators before disappearing into the crowd.

Police tweeted that they had arrested a suspect and recovered a weapon.

"Officers searched, but do not believe there are any additional victims," police said on Twitter.

A man in his 20s suffered a gunshot wound and was taken to hospital in stable condition, the fire department tweeted.

Q13Fox said the victim, a protester, had been shot in the arm after he approached the gunman when he was still inside the vehicle.

The Seattle rally was part of protests triggered by the May 25 death of Mr George Floyd, who was killed when a white police officer pressed his knee on the unarmed black man's neck for nearly nine minutes.

In a separate development, Minneapolis city council members pledged to abolish the police force whose officer knelt on the neck of Mr Floyd.

Nine members of the 13-person city council pledged on Sunday to do away with the police department in favour of a community-led safety model, though they provided little detail.

"A veto-proof majority of the MPLS City Council just publicly agreed that the Minneapolis Police Department is not reformable and that we're going to end the current policing system," Minneapolis council member Alondra Cano said on Twitter.

In New York, Mayor Bill de Blasio told reporters he would shift some funds out of the city's vast police budget and reallocate it to youth and social services. He said he would take enforcement of rules on street vending out of the hands of police, accused of using the regulations to harass minorities.

Meanwhile, curfew was lifted in New York and other cities, including Philadelphia and Chicago. - AFP, REUTERS

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