REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, NEW YORK -- A gunman fatally shot two New York police officers as they sat in their squad car on Saturday and then killed himself, the New York Times reported, in the first deaths of police officers by gunfire in the city in three years.

The officers were patrolling in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. NYPD Deputy Chief Kim Royster said it appeared the shots struck them in the upper body, the newspaper said.

The gunman opened fire on the officers from the patrol car's passenger side and fled into a nearby subway station. The man then died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, the Times quoted Royster as saying.

A police spokesman could not confirm the newspaper account, but he said the officers had been taken to Brooklyn's Woodhull Medical Center and said their conditions were unknown. The spokesman identified the shooter as a 28-year-old man and said he had been taken to Brooklyn Hospital Center. A weapon has been recovered, he said.