3 US police officers fatally shot. 3 wounded in Baton Rouge, Louisiana

US gunmen have ambushed and fatally shot three police officers and wounded three others in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the same city where a black man was killed by white officers earlier this month.

The shots were fired around 9 am Sunday morning, kicking off a massive manhunt for the shooters.

Officials confirm that six Baton Rouge Police Officers and East Baton Rouge Parish sheriff’s deputies were struck during the gunfire.

The condition of one of the injured officers taken to hospital has been described as critical.

One suspect is dead and two others may still be at large. Investigators are working to determine how many shooters were involved.

“The scene seems to be contained right now, but it is still active,” said Sergeant Don Coppola, a spokesman for the Baton Rouge Police Department. “We’re asking everyone to stay out of the area.”

The ambush comes less than two weeks after the fatal shooting of a 2 black men in two separate states.

On July 5, 2016, Alton Sterling was shot several times and killed in Baton Rouge by a white officer, one of two consecutive police killings that led to renewed protests against racial bias in law enforcement.

One day after Sterling’s death, Philando Castile was fatally shot by police in his car in Falcon Heights, Minnesota.

Those police killings triggered a revenge attack by a black US Army veteran who shot dead five officers in Dallas, Texas, during a protest against police brutality and racial profiling of African Americans.

The attack in Dallas was one of the worst mass shootings on police in US history.

The killings have renewed racial tensions that have flared repeatedly across the US since the 2014 police killing of unarmed black teen Michael Brown in Missouri.

Police in the United States killed over 1,150 people in 2015, with the largest police departments disproportionately killing at least 321 African Americans, according to data compiled by an activist group that runs the Mapping Police Violence project.