“We express our sympathy and pray to them and their families for a full recovery, especially given the severity of the injuries as Hisham was shot in the back, Tahsin in the chest and Kinnan was slightly wounded,” he said. mail.

Burlington police said in a statement late Saturday that officers responded to reports of shots fired around 6:30 p.m. Saturday night and found two people shot in the area of ​​the university campus and a third a short distance away.

A police statement, without naming the victims, said the first two were treated at the scene and then taken by firefighters to the University of Vermont Medical Center, while the third was taken by police to the same hospital.

Police have not identified or arrested the shooter, according to the statement. A police spokesman could not be reached Sunday.

The shooting comes amid a rise in Islamophobic and anti-Semitic incidents in the United States, including violent attacks and online harassment, as conflict erupts between Israel and Hamas on October 7.

The students spoke Arabic and wore traditional Palestinian keffiyeh, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry said on Sunday, calling on US authorities to punish those responsible.

The Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), a US-based advocacy group, called on state and federal law enforcement to investigate the shooting as a hate crime in a statement Sunday.

“The rise in anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian sentiment that we are experiencing is unprecedented, and this is yet another example of how this hatred is escalating into violence,” said Abed Ayoub, national executive director of ADC. (Reuters)