US investigators led by the FBI's joint terrorism task force are seeking motives for what drove a man to open fire on two National Guard soldiers mere blocks from the White House in what officials called an "ambush" attack on Thanksgiving eve.
The two soldiers, part of a militarised law enforcement mission ordered by President Donald Trump months ago and challenged in court by officials of the District of Columbia, are hospitalised in critical condition.
West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrisey had initially said in a post on X that both victims had died from their injuries.
But he soon posted a second statement that cited "conflicting reports" about their condition.
The suspect, who was wounded in an exchange of gunfire before he was arrested, was identified by the Department of Homeland Security as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan national.
Mr Trump, who was at his resort in Florida at the time of the attack, released a pre-recorded video statement last night calling the shooting "an act of evil, an act of hatred and an act of terror".
The president said an Afghan man who fled the Taliban was the suspect in the shooting.
The announcement in the brief video signalled the intertwining of three politically sensitive issues - Mr Trump's controversial use of the military in the US, immigration and the legacy of the country's war in Afghanistan.
The suspect had arrived in the United States in 2021 "on those infamous flights", Mr Trump said, referring to the evacuations of Afghans fleeing as the Taliban took over the country in the wake of the US retreat after 20 years of war.
He said his administration would "re-examine" all Afghans who came to the US during Joe Biden's presidency.
The US Citizenship and Immigration Services agency later said that it has halted processing of all immigration requests relating to Afghan nationals indefinitely, "pending further review of security and vetting protocols".
According to the DHS, Mr Lakanwal entered the US in 2021 under Operation Allies Welcome.
The scheme is a Biden-era programme to resettle thousands of Afghans who assisted the US during the Afghanistan war and feared reprisals from Taliban forces who seized control of their homeland after the US withdrawal.
The DHS did not include other details of his immigration record, but a Trump administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity said Mr Lakanwal applied for asylum in December 2024 and was approved on 23 April of this year, three months after Mr Trump took office.
The official said the 29-year-old, who resided in Washington state, had no known criminal history.
Secret Service agents placed the White House under a security lockdown immediately after the shooting as a precaution.
In response to the attack, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said the president had asked to send another 500 National Guard troops to join the more than 2,000 Guard soldiers previously mobilised in the nation's capital.
Vice President JD Vance, who was in Kentucky, said in a post on X that the shooting proved that the Trump administration's immigration policy was justified.
"We must redouble our efforts to deport people with no right to be in our country," he said.
Critics of the Trump administration's immigration policy say it has employed illegally harsh tactics and swept up immigrants indiscriminately, including some with no criminal history and others here legally.
Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser, who has clashed openly with Mr Trump over the deployment of National Guard troops in her city, told reporters hours after the incident, "this is a targeted shooting".
At the same news briefing, Jeff Carroll, executive assistant chief of the Washington Metropolitan Police Department, said the two soldiers were "ambushed" and that the known assailant appeared to have acted alone.
Mr Carroll said the soldiers, members of the West Virginia National Guard, were on a "high-visibility patrol" outside the entrance to a subway station when the suspect "came around the corner", drew a weapon and immediately fired at the pair.
Other National Guard troops subdued the suspect after an exchange of gunfire, he said.
Mr Trump said in August he was ordering the National Guard deployment to fight crime in a city he said had become unsafe, despite objections from District of Columbia officials who challenged the move in court as an infringement on local government control.
The shooting came five days after a federal judge issued a ruling to temporarily block National Guard troops from performing law enforcement duties in the district without the mayor's approval.
However, the judge paused the effect of her order until December to allow an appeal from the Trump administration.
Mr Trump, a Republican, has deployed troops in several other Democratic-led cities - Los Angeles, Chicago, Portland, Oregon,and Memphis in Tennessee - to combat what he has described as lawlessness and violent unrest over his crackdown on illegal immigration.
Democratic leaders of those cities have accused Mr Trump of manufacturing pretexts for militarised shows of force to punish political foes.
