6-year-old boy killed in anti-Muslim attack in Illinois, police 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.”

“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.