6-year-old boy stabbed 26 times in anti-Muslim attack in Illinois, authorities say

An Illinois man stabbed a 6-year-old boy to death and critically wounded his mother in an alleged anti-Muslim hate crime, the Will County Sheriff’s Office said Sunday, calling it a “senseless and cowardly act of violence”, Report informs via NBC News.

“Detectives were able to determine that both victims in this brutal attack were targeted by the suspect due to them being Muslim and the ongoing Middle Eastern conflict involving Hamas and the Israelis,” the sheriff’s office said in a news release.

The boy was stabbed 26 times at his Plainfield home by his landlord, Joseph Czuba, 71, investigators said. He died at the hospital.