Authorities in suburban Chicago accused a man of fatally stabbing a 6-year-old boy on Saturday and seriously wounding the boy’s mother because they were Muslim, an attack that officials tied to the violence in Israel and the Gaza Strip.

The killing in Illinois alarmed Muslim leaders, who called on American politicians and journalists to more fully reflect the humanity of Palestinian people as they address the conflict overseas.

“This was directly connected to dehumanising of Palestinians,” said Abdelnasser Rashid, a Democratic Illinois state representative who is Palestinian American.

Investigators in Will County, southwest of Chicago, described a gory scene. They said a 71-year-old landlord turned on the boy and his mother, who were his tenants, at their home in Plainfield Township on Saturday morning, stabbing them repeatedly with a serrated knife that had a 7-inch blade.

The boy, identified as Wadea Al-Fayoume by a family member and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, was stabbed 26 times and pronounced dead at a hospital, according to the sheriff’s office. The boy’s mother, 32, was in serious condition with more than a dozen stab wounds, officials said. Officials said she ran into a bathroom and continued fighting off the attacker as she dialled 911. Relatives said the family is Palestinian-American.

The Will County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement on Sunday that “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 statement did not specify how investigators knew the motive, but it said they had conducted interviews and reviewed other evidence.

The man accused in the attack, Joseph Czuba, was being held on charges of first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, two counts of a hate crime and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon.

Late on Sunday, the department of justice announced that it had opened a federal hate crimes investigation into the attack.

The assault on Saturday came amid mounting violence between Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian group that controls the Gaza Strip.

On October 7, Hamas launched a surprise attack against Israel that left more than 1,300 Israelis dead, prompting intense retaliation that has killed 2,670 people in Gaza, according to officials in Gaza. Across West Asia, fears of a widening conflict and worsening humanitarian crisis are mounting.

New York Times News Service