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Three Palestinian students shot near US campus


By BBC
Published : 27 Nov 2023 10:28 PM | Updated : 28 Nov 2023 01:08 PM

A 48-year-old man has been arrested over the shooting of three US students of Palestinian descent in Vermont and will appear in court on Monday.

Jason J Eaton was taken into custody after a search of his home, according to CBS News, BBC's partner in the US.

HishamAwartani, Tahseen Ahmed and KinnanAbdalhamid were shot near the University of Vermont in Burlington on Saturday.

The US government is looking into whether the shooting was a hate crime.

The US attorney in Vermont said that his office will work with the Justice Department's civil rights division to assess "whether a federal crime may have been committed".

Officers are currently investigating a possible motive but say the victims were wearing keffiyeh - a traditional scarf - and speaking Arabic when attacked.

The three men, all aged 20, were visiting the home of a relative of one of them and walking along the street when a white man confronted them with a gun, police said. He fired on them without speaking then fled.

Police detained Mr Eaton on Sunday afternoon, after an hours-long search of his home provided evidence that gave them probable cause to believe he was the perpetrator, CBS reported.

He is expected to be arraigned later on Monday.

The attack comes as the US deals with a surge in Islamophobic and antisemitic incidents, including violent assaults and online harassment, since the Israel-Hamas conflict began on 7 October.

While all three victims survived, they are currently receiving medical care and one "sustained much more serious injuries," the Burlington Police Department said in a statement.

Two are US citizens, and one is a legal resident, police added.

MrAbdalhamid, was named by Haverford College in Pennsylvania as one of its students. MrAwartani attends Brown University in Rhode Island and Mr Ahmed is a student at Trinity College in Connecticut.

They attended Ramallah Friends School, a Quaker-run private non-profit school in Ramallah, together, according to family members.

On X, formerly Twitter, the school said that MrAwartani was shot in the back and Mr Ahmed in the chest.

Rich Price, an uncle of one of the victims, said the three men had been visiting an eight-year-old's birthday party.

"The last thing that we imagine could be possible was that in our family neighbourhood, they would walk down the street and this would happen to them," he said.

"Less than five minutes [after] them leaving our home, we saw the sirens and the flashing lights of police cruisers go by our house. And we thought, boy, something's going on.

He had "no idea that it was my nephew and his friends."

Earlier, the families of the victims released a statement through the pro-Palestinian non-profit organisation Institute for Middle East Understanding.

They called on law enforcement to conduct a thorough investigation and to treat it as a hate crime.

The FBI has warned of potential attacks by "homegrown violent extremists" since the war began.

After the shooting, the Council on American-Islamic relations offered a $10,000 (£7,900) reward for information leading to an arrest.

Ambassador Husam Zomlot, the head of the Palestinian Mission to the UK, posted a photo of the three victims on social media and added: "The hate crimes against Palestinians must stop."

Vermont senator and former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders posted a condemnation of the violence in Vermont's largest city, which has a population of about 45,000.

"It is shocking and deeply upsetting that three young Palestinians were shot here in Burlington, Vermont," Mr Sanders wrote on X. "Hate has no place here, or anywhere."

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