Two shot after 'police come under heavy gunfire' at Ferguson march

Update: 9.26am:

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Two people have been shot in protests in the US town of Ferguson where unarmed black teenager Michael Brown was killed by a white policeman a year ago.

Officers were trying to disperse demonstrators when it happened, and it is not known how bad their injuries are.

Shots rang out as several hundred people gathered on West Florissant Street.

St Louis County Police said that an officer who came under “heavy gunfire” had returned shots, and that at least two unmarked cars were hit by bullets.

Speaking before the incident, Ferguson police chief Andre Anderson warned force might have to be used.

He said: "We've allowed people to protest, we've also allowed people in the vicinity to be given plenty of egress so that they can leave.

"We've given over 15 orders that they need to disperse.

"At some point, some of these folks are going to have to get off the roadway and we're going to have to take some enforcement action."

Minutes after the shots were heard, an Associated Press photographer saw a man lying face down, covered in blood, behind a boarded-up restaurant.

It was not immediately clear how badly the man was injured.

Later, an AP reporter saw a woman overcome with grief. Friends were consoling her. She screamed: “Why did they do it?” Another woman nearby fainted.

A man nearby said: “They killed my brother.”

Several events earlier marked the anniversary of the killing that cast greater scrutiny on how police interact with black communities.

Mr Brown’s father, Michael Brown Sr, led a march through town after a crowd of hundreds observed four and a half minutes of silence.

The group began their silence at 12.02pm local time, the time the teenager was killed, to symbolise the four and a half hours that his body lay in the street after he was killed. Two doves were released at the end.

Michael Brown Sr then held hands with others to lead the march, which started at the site where his son, who was black and unarmed, was fatally shot by Ferguson officer Darren Wilson on August 9 2014.

A grand jury and the US department of justice declined to prosecute Mr Wilson, who resigned in November, but the shooting touched off a national “Black Lives Matter” movement.

Pausing along the route at a permanent memorial for his son, Michael Brown Sr said, “Miss you.”

He had thanked supporters before the march for not allowing what happened to his son to be “swept under the carpet”.