Obama denounces Baton Rouge police shooting as `work of cowards`

District of Columbia: President Barack Obama condemned as "cowardly" a shooting that killed three police officers and wounded three more in the Louisiana capital of Baton Rouge.

"For the second time in two weeks, police officers who put their lives on the line for ours every day were doing their job when they were killed in a cowardly and reprehensible assault," Obama said in a statement.

"These are attacks on public servants, on the rule of law and on civilized society, and they have to stop."

A separate shooting in Dallas, Texas earlier this month killed five police officers during a demonstration triggered by the fatal police shooting of two African-American men whose dying moments were captured in shocking video footage that went viral online.