A 6-year-old Palestinian-American boy was stabbed to death and his mother was injured by their 71-year-old landlord in a Chicago suburb. The man told police that he targeted the two victims because of their Islamic faith and in response to Hamas’ recent attack on Israel.

The boy was stabbed 26 times with a knife and died in hospital. His mother was seriously injured. She was stabbed more than 10 times.

The police talk about a senseless and cowardly act. “We have determined that both victims in this brutal attack were targeted by the suspect because they are Muslims and because of the conflict in the Middle East between Hamas and Israel,” the official said. police.

According to text messages from the mother to the boy’s father, the suspect shouted before the attack: “You Muslims, you must die!” The owner allegedly knocked on the door and when the mother opened it, he tried to strangle her. Then he attacked her with a knife. Then the woman ran to the bathroom and locked herself. There she called emergency services. When she got out, she discovered that her son had been stabbed.

The suspect, Joseph Chuba, was found sitting on the floor in the driveway of the house after the crime. He is suspected of first-degree murder.

The Muslim family lived on the ground floor of the house for two years. An Islamic civil rights advocacy group in Chicago called the crime “our worst nightmare.” The Council on American-Islamic Relations also said in a press conference that the media had created a climate that made an attack like this more likely because of its “skewed coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” the New York Times reported.