Idaho police say 2 killed after responding firefighters attacked by active shooter

The authorities say that a suspect shot firefighters responding to fires near the heart of Alene, Idaho, and the sheriff said that two people had been killed and that the police “still took elite shooters” on Sunday afternoon.

The Kootenai County Sheriff’s office said the crews responded to a fire at Canfield Mountain around 1:30 p.m. and that shots had been reported about half an hour later.

Idaho governor Brad Little said that “multiple” firefighters had been attacked.

“This is an odious direct assault on our brave firefighters,” said Little on the social media platform X. “I ask all Idahoans to pray for them and their families while we are waiting to find out more.”

The Sheriff’s Office in the County of Soshone Voisin said on Facebook that the authorities “faced an active shooting situation where the shooter was still at freedom”.

An alert from the Kootenai County Emergency Management Office asked people to avoid the area around the start of the Canfield Mountain and Nettleton Gulch Road trail, about 6.5 kilometers north of the city center of Alene. The fire was still burning.

No additional details have been provided.

Coeur d’Alene is a city of 55,000 inhabitants near the border with the state of Washington.