Spotlight: U.S. police targetted in at least three shootings after Dallas attack

U.S. Police officers were targeted in at least three separate shooting incidents on Friday as the country was still reeling from three deadly shootings in four days which threatened to pit the country's African-American community and law enforcement officials against each other.

According to local authorities in Georgia, one police officer was ambushed on Friday after he was dispatched in response to a report of a break-in Valdosta, Georgia.

The officer was shot multiple times after being lured to the scene by the gunman, said Valdosta Police Chief Brian Childress at a press conference.

Both the officer and gunman were wounded in the exchange of fire, and local authorities said both were expected to survive.

The officer is white, and the suspect was identified by authorities as an Asian male.

In another shooting incident in Atlanta, Georgia, a gunman in a passing car shot multiple times at one police officer on patrol before he was arrested. The officer was not hit, said local authorities.

The officer is white, and the race of the suspect was not available at the moment.

Also in St, Louis, Missouri, a motorist shot an officer three times on Friday as the officer was walking back to his car during a traffic stop, said local authorities.

The race of both the suspect and the officer was not available at the moment.

The shooting incidents targetting police officers came hours after a gunman shot dead five police officers in an ambush-style shooting on Thursday night during a protest against police brutality in Dallas, Texas.

According to local authorities, the gunman, a black U.S. military veteran of the Afghan war, told authorities during negotiations that he was "upset at white people" and wanted to "kill white people, especially white officers."

The shooting spree in Dallas came one day after a police officer shot dead an African-American man in Falcon Heights, Minnesota during a routine traffic stop that derived from a broken taillight.

According to initial investigation, a police officer shot Philando Castile, a 32-year-old African-American, several times when the latter sat in his car.

Castile's girlfriend Diamond Reynolds then live-streamed online the aftermath of the police shooting, recording a gruesome scene where her bloody boyfriend slumping next to her.

According to a video released on the website of The New York Times on Thursday in which Reynolds recounted the incident to others, Castile was shot when reaching for his driver's license and registration as required by the officer.

Reynolds said Castile had told the police officer that he was carrying a weapon but was licensed to do so.

The deadly encounter in Minnesota happened only one day after another police shooting killed another African-American man, Alton Sterling, in Baton Rouge, the capital city of the U.S. state of Louisiana.

Sterling was selling compact discs outside a food store when he was gunned down following an altercation with two police officers early Tuesday morning, according to the state's daily newspaper The Times-Picayune.

The Justice Department had already launched a civil rights investigation into Sterling's death. Enditem