Three students of Palestinian origin were shot dead in the USA

The Burlington Police Department reported in a statement Sunday that a white man approached the young men wearing the Palestinian scarf while walking and “fired at least four shots without speaking and is believed to have fled on foot.”

Two of them were injured in the upper body and one in the lower extremities. Two of the victims are stable and one was seriously injured.

Police did not identify the victims but said they were in their mid-20s and were visiting the family of one of them on Thanksgiving. All three are of Palestinian descent and two are American citizens while the other is a legal resident.

Burlington Police Chief Jon Murad and Mayor Miro Weinberger said the injured could be victims of a hate crime, but authorities have not confirmed this.

In a statement, the NGO ADC (Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee) said that after reviewing the initial information provided, “there are reasons to believe that this shooting took place because the victims are Arabs.”

The organization identified the students as Hisham Awartani of Brown University; Kinnan Abdalhamid from Haverford University and Tahseen Ahmed from Trinity University.

“ADC calls on Vermont authorities to investigate this shooting as a hate crime. Additionally, ADC has contacted the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to also request an immediate investigation into hate crimes,” the statement said.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy group, today offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the perpetrator.

CAIR also called on state and federal law enforcement in Vermont to investigate a possible racial motive for the shooting.

A few weeks ago, Biden reported that he had directed Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Attorney General Merrick Garland to strengthen protections for the Jewish, Muslim and Arab-American communities in the wake of the war between Israel and Hamas.