Three police officers have been shot and killed and another five wounded as they served an arrest warrant in North Carolina.

According to officials, the suspect was also shot dead.

This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly.

Please refresh the page for the fullest version.

You can receive breaking news alerts on a smartphone or tablet via the Sky News app. You can also follow @SkyNews on X or subscribe to our YouTube channel to keep up with the latest news.

Pro-Palestinian students in the US have defied an order by university officials to dismantle a tent camp set up to protest Israel’s war in Gaza or face suspension.

College authorities at Columbia University in New York, sent students a letter on Monday demanding they sign a form agreeing to obey university policies until June 2025 or an earlier graduation, if they wish to finish the term in good standing.

If they failed to comply by 2pm, local time, the letter said, they would be suspended, pending further investigation and would not finish the term, the note said.

But those at the camp, now in its second week, voted nearly unanimously to stay put, NBC, Sky’s US partner, said.

Around 2.45pm, protesters were seen marching on the quad and chanting “Disclose! Divest! We will not slow, we will not rest!'”, NBC said.

More than 300 people and at least 120 tents remained.

Noting that exams are starting and graduation is coming up, the letter said: “We urge you to remove the encampment so that we do not deprive your fellow students, their families and friends of this momentous occasion.”

Mahmoud Khalil, the protesters’ lead negotiator, said university representatives began passing out the notices at the encampment shortly after 10am on Monday.

Demonstrators set up tents in the centre of the Columbia campus in one of the early pro-Palestinian protests over the Israel-Hamas war and its mounting death toll, but dissent quickly spread to other colleges, sparking clashes with police and arrests.

More than 900 people have been arrested across the US since police in New York removed a pro-Palestinian protest encampment at Columbia, arresting more than 100 demonstrators as they did so, on 18 April.

Clashes have continued, with about 275 people arrested on Saturday at various campuses including Indiana University at Bloomington, Arizona State University and Washington University in St Louis.

On Sunday night and Monday, people at an encampment near George Washington University in the US capital, protested, breaching and dismantling barriers.

Protesters at Yale University set up a new encampment with dozens of tents on Sunday afternoon, nearly a week after police arrested nearly 50 demonstrators and cleared a similar camp.

Read more:
Student anti-Israel protests continue to sweep the US
Campus protests sum up a moment of divisiveness
Man arrested for swastika placard at London protest

More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed during the Israel-Hamas war, according to local health officials, who say about two-thirds of the dead are women and children.

Israel declared war on Hamas and unleashed an air and ground offensive in Gaza in response to the attack on southern Israel on 7 October.

Hamas killed about 1,200 people in Israel and took another 250 hostages in its assault.

A four-month-old baby was among at least five people killed after dozens of tornadoes swept across central parts of the US.

Officials said at least 100 people were injured in Oklahoma, where four of the five died, as the extreme weather flattened buildings, ripped off roofing and threw vehicles down the street.

The destruction was extensive in Sulphur, a rural town of about 5,000 people, as experts said nearly 40 twisters are believed to have carved their way through central areas across the weekend.

It comes after extreme weather left a trail of destruction in other central areas on Friday.

Officials confirmed a man died from injuries sustained in Iowa from a tornado in Pottawattamie County.

Oklahoma governor Kevin Stitt was in Sulphur to assess the damage when he declared a disaster emergency for 12 counties.

“You just can’t believe the destruction. It seems like every business downtown has been destroyed,” he said.

“Definitely the most damage since I’ve been governor.”

He added about 30 people were injured in Sulphur, including some who were in a bar as the tornado struck, while thousands of residents were left without power.

President Joe Biden has offered the full support of the federal government to help with the recovery efforts, the White House said in a statement.

Storm warnings for high winds, heavy rain and hail were issued by the National Weather Service (NWS) on Sunday for more than 47 million people stretching across a large part of the US from eastern Texas towards Oklahoma, Missouri, Illinois and Wisconsin.

The NWS reported 38 possible twisters struck the central belt with Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri enduring the worst of the weather.

At one point, more than seven million people were placed under tornado warnings.

The authorities said the tornado in Sulphur began in a city park before sweeping through the town, flipping cars and ripping the roofs and walls from buildings.

Sulphur resident Kelly Trussell said: “How do you rebuild it? This is complete devastation. It is crazy, you want to help but where do you start?”

Read more on Sky News:
Extreme weather in Europe to become ‘more intense’
Flooding in east Africa claims dozens of lives

On Friday, a tornado forced an industrial building in Lancaster County, Nebraska, to collapse with 70 people inside.

Several people were trapped, but everyone was rescued, the authorities said. Three people had injuries which were not life-threatening.

The NWS later said there had been possibly two tornadoes which spent around an hour creeping through Nebraska, leaving behind carnage with winds of up to 165mph.