Seven deaths in overnight crime spree

Washington: An overnight spasm of homicidal violence in the District of Columbia ended near dawn on Saturday with seven men dead and three wounded.

These included a triple slaying after a street argument, a drive-by shooting near an elementary school, a deadly domestic dispute and a game that ended in a fusillade of bullets, police said.

All the killings, including the slaying of a man found with his throat cut in his car near his home, occurred within about a 3-km radius in sections of Northeast and Southeast Washington, in neighbourhoods ranging from working-class to tumbledown, where families in neatly kept rowhouses live among street-corner loiterers and littered vacant lots.

One of those killed, a 52-year-old man, was shot by D.C. police after he refused to drop a knife during a domestic dispute, authorities said.

Violent day

"This can only be described as an unbelievably high level of violent crime to take place in a short time," Democratic Mayor Adrian Fenty told reporters, standing where three victims were killed in a hail of 35 shots.

"We've had some crime sprees, but this has got to be one of the most violent days in recent memory, if not ever."

The weekend slayings, which do not include the police shooting, pushed the city's homicide toll to 72 for this year, the first time that the 2008 body count has surpassed the number of slayings at the same time last year.