© REUTERS/Lawrence Bryant
Fireworks explodes over a protestor with his hands up during a protest in Ferguson, Missouri, May 30, 2020.
The Independence Day weekend turned deadly across the US as
77 people were shot in Chicago alone, continuing a spate of violence that has plagued largely black neighborhoods amid anti-racism protests focused on police brutality.
Between July 3 and July 5, 13 people were fatally shot in Chicago. The latest violence wasn't out of character in a city that earned the nickname "Chiraq" - likening the bloodshed to that in war-torn Iraq - and
where around 80 percent of homicide victims each year are black, according to police data.
Father's Day weekend last month saw 104 shootings and 14 dead.
The city suffered its deadliest day in at least six decades on May 31, when 18 people were killed. Chicago had 1,384 shootings in the first six months of 2020,
a 45 percent increase from the same point in 2019, according to
police figures.
New York City, Atlanta, Milwaukee and other large US cities also registered a spike in violence in recent weeks. The Big Apple had 30 shootings, including 10 fatalities, on July 5 alone. NYPD responded to a 20-year high of 205 shooting incidents
in June, compared with 89 a year earlier.
The carnage is taking place at the same time that activist group Black Lives Matter is leading anti-racism protests across the US, after 46-year-old black man George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis police custody on May 25.
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