FERGUSON, Mo. _ Two police officers were hit by gunfire early Thursday outside the Ferguson Police Department.

The shots were fired just after midnight as police were confronting protesters who had gathered outside the police station.

St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar said one officer was with his department and the other was with the Webster Groves department. Both were being treated at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, where Belmar spoke, and were in serious condition.

The chief said at least three shots were fired. He described the injuries of both men as “very serious gunshot injuries.” Neither injury was considered life-threatening.

The Webster Groves officer was shot in the face. He is 32 and has been on the force seven years.

The county officer was hit in the shoulder. That officer is 41 and has been on the force for 14 years.

Belmar said no suspects have been identified in the shootings.

He said he believes the officers were targeted. They had been standing in a group when the shots were fired. The gunfire was “parallel to the ground,” he said.

The chief said that 60-70 protesters had come to the Ferguson Police Department earlier in the night, some of them blocking roads and sidewalks. The protests prompted police departments to send officers, some in riot gear.

Belmar said he felt police had been fortunate since protests erupted in Ferguson in August after the police shooting of Michael Brown because officers patrolling those protests had not been injured.

“But I have said all along that we cannot sustain this forever without problems,” he added. “That’s not an indictment of everybody that’s expressing their First Amendment rights but we have seen in law enforcement that this is a very, very dangerous environment for officers to work in regarding the amount of gunfire that we have experienced up there.”

Belmar said there were no suspects in the shooting and he was unsure of any links to the protests. “I don’t know who did the shooting, to be honest with you, but somehow they were embedded in that group of folks,” he said.

The gunfire was captured on video by some of those at the scene.

After the shots were fired, the scene turned chaotic. Some protesters dropped to the ground. Others fled the scene.

Several members of the media, including a Post-Dispatch reporter and photographer, were near the officers who were shot.

Media and police ran behind two brick walls and officers pulled out their weapons. Then a line of police cars from more than a dozen departments arrived.

Police closed South Florissant Road in front of the police station and cordoned a section of the area off with crime scene tape.

Belmar said the shots were fired from across Florissant Road, northwest of the police department. Witnesses said the shots appeared to come from the direction of a block of homes on Tiffin Avenue that intersects South Florissant Road, where the police department is located.

Bradley Rayford, a freelance journalist who has been reporting from Ferguson since the unrest began there last summer, said he saw three or four muzzle flashes from the crest of Tiffin Hill, a residential neighborhood with large century-old homes.

He was in front of the police line on South Florissant at the time. He said he couldn’t tell if the shots were being fired from a vehicle.

At 2:30 a.m. a contingent of about 25 officers ascended the hill and began scouring the front yard of a home directly behind a tire business, their flashlights sweeping in arcs as they searched for evidence.

The gunfire rang out as the protests seemed to be dwindling.

About 25 protesters remained at the scene about two hours after the shooting. Police wouldn’t let them leave until they gave statements.

The protesters seemed to be two camps. The first were there to make a point that they weren’t satisfied with the resignations of City Manager John Shaw and Police Chief Thomas Jackson. They were chanting in unison.

The other one was volatile, angry, hurling profanities at the police, media and other protesters. Some skirmishes broke out among the factions.

At least two people were taken into custody, but those arrests occurred before the gunfire erupted.

___

(Susan Weich, Christine Byers and Paul Hampel, all of the Post-Dispatch, contributed to this story.)

___

(c)2015 St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Visit the St. Louis Post-Dispatch at www.stltoday.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC