The United States' increasingly violent abortion conflict erupted again yesterday as an apparently lone gunman rampaged through two Boston clinics, killing two women and injuring five other people.
The man, dressed in black and described as in his mid-thirties, burst into the Planned Parenthood Clinic in Boston's Brookline suburb and began firing a rifle indiscriminately.
Minutes later, shooting broke out at the Preterm Health Services clinic a few blocks away.
'A man came in with a black duffle bag,' one witness said. 'He said 'Is this Preterm?' The woman answering the phone said, 'Yes', and he dropped the bag and opened fire.'
A security guard at the clinic was also injured as he exchanged fire with the man who appeared to have been responsible for both attacks.
Police yesterday launched a manhunt, using helicopters and dogs. President Bill Clinton condemned the killings as 'domestic terrorism' and ordered a federal investigation into the shootings.
The first attack left the receptionist at the Planned Parenthood clinic dead and another female employee injured. Two men accompanying patients were also hurt.
At the Preterm clinic, the gunman shot the receptionist and another office worker before fleeing. A woman who had at least five gunshot wounds died later in a Boston hospital.
The incidents followed three previous fatal shootings at US abortion clinics. Less than a month ago, a former Presbyterian minister, Paul Hill, was sentenced to death for the murder of a doctor and his escort outside a Florida clinic in July.
Yesterday's attack will heighten fears that activists are resorting to increasingly violent tactics as they despair of challenging abortion rights through legal channels.
'The violence has clearly reached a new level with this attack,' said Patricia Anderson, a spokesperson for the National Abortion Federation. 'Now it's not just physicians but other staff members as well who are being targeted.'
The Planned Parenthood Federation says several of its clinics have been firebombed. 'If anything the violence has been getting worse,' a spokesperson, Mona Miller, said.
She called for a meeting with President Clinton and increased security at clinics. 'If it takes marshalls outside every clinic, then we'd like to see that. This kind of thing would not be tolerated if it was any procedure other than abortion .'
US marshalls were deployed outside some clinics after the Hill shooting, but Planned Parenthood said its Brookline clinic had received no threats.
The governor of Massachusetts, William Weld, said state police would be available to stand guard at all clinics in the state.
'No one is going to settle moral arguments by violence in Massachusetts,' he said.
