ISTANBUL

A landlord in Chicago in the US state of Illinois stabbed a 6-year-old boy to death and seriously wounded his mother in an attack motivated by their Islamic faith and the Israel-Palestine conflict.

“We are shocked and disturbed to learn that a landlord in Chicago expressing anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian views broke into a Muslim family's apartment and attacked them with a knife, injuring the mother and killing her 6-year-old son, Wadea Al-Fayoume,” the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) , the US’s largest Muslim civil rights organization, said on X.

“The Islamophobic rhetoric and anti-Palestinian racism being spread by politicians, media outlets, and social media platforms must stop,” the organization added.

The Will County’s Sheriff’s Office later issued a statement saying that based on a forensic pathologist’s examination, the boy was stabbed 26 times throughout his body.

His 32-year-old mother suffered over a dozen stab wounds. She is recovering and is expected to survive.

The attacker, Joseph Czuba, 71, was charged with first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, aggravated battery with a deadly weapon and two counts of a hate crime, said the sheriff’s office.