CHICAGO – The authorities in suburban Chicago accused a man of fatally stabbing a six-year-old boy last Saturday and seriously wounding the boy’s mother because they are Muslims, 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 Mr Abdelnasser Rashid, a Democratic Illinois state representative who is a Palestinian-American.

Investigators in Will County, south-west 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 last Saturday morning, stabbing them repeatedly with a serrated knife that had a blade about 28cm long.

The boy was identified as Wadea Al-Fayoume by a family member and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

He was stabbed 26 times and pronounced dead at a hospital, according to the sheriff’s office.

The authorities did not confirm the names of either victim. 

The boy’s mother, 32, was in serious condition with more than a dozen stab wounds, officials said.

They 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 conducted interviews and reviewed other evidence.

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

Czuba was scheduled to make an initial court appearance in Will County on Monday, according to online records. It was not clear whether he had hired a lawyer.

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

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

On Oct 7, Hamas launched a surprise attack against Israel that left more than 1,400 Israelis dead, prompting intense retaliation that has killed at least 2,670 people in Gaza, according to officials there. Across the Middle East, fears of a widening conflict and worsening humanitarian crisis are mounting.

Suburban Chicago has a large Palestinian-American community, including an area with many Arab restaurants and shops that some refer to as Little Palestine.

Last Saturday’s attack happened in a different part of the Chicago suburbs, in a home along a busy stretch of highway near a Chevrolet dealership and a barbecue restaurant. That property, about 65km south-west of downtown Chicago, was adorned with several American flags, an advertisement for organic honey and a sign asking people to pray to end abortion.

Ms Mariola Jagodzinski, who lives two houses away, said she had never had any negative interactions with the suspect. She said that she had given toys to Wadea’s mother and that she was speechless and distressed when she heard about the killing.

“He was a playful child – really full of energy,” Ms Jagodzinski said. “Kids are innocent. This really destroys so many hearts.”

On Sunday, the Chicago office of CAIR, a Muslim civil rights and advocacy organisation, denounced the stabbing and called it “our worst nightmare”.

“Our hearts are heavy, and our prayers are with the darling boy and his mother,” Mr Ahmed Rehab, executive director of CAIR-Chicago, said in a statement.

Attempts to reach the prosecutor and coroner in Will County on Sunday were not immediately successful.

The Illinois State Police said in a statement on Sunday that it was coordinating with other agencies “in response to the elevated level of threats of violence and hate crimes related to the current conflict”.

“Everyone in Illinois – both law enforcement and community members alike – must remain on guard against both terrorism and hate crimes during this period of volatility,” said state police director Brendan Kelly.

Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat, said in a statement that “to take a six-year-old child’s life in the name of bigotry is nothing short of evil”.

“Wadea should be heading to school in the morning,” Mr Pritzker said. “Instead, his parents will wake up without their son.”

President Joe Biden said in a statement on Sunday night that he was “shocked and sickened” by the attack.

“The child’s Palestinian Muslim family came to America seeking what we all seek – a refuge to live, learn and pray in peace,” he said.

“This horrific act of hate has no place in America, and stands against our fundamental values: freedom from fear for how we pray, what we believe and who we are.”

CAIR officials said they reviewed text messages, written in Arabic, that the boy’s mother sent to his father from the hospital. In those messages, CAIR officials said, the mother indicated that the landlord had been angry with what he was seeing on the news. CAIR did not make the text messages available for review by news organisations.

According to CAIR’s account of the text messages, the landlord knocked on the family’s door, and when the mother opened it, he tried to choke her and attacked her with a knife, yelling: “You Muslims must die!”

When she ran into the bathroom to call 911, according to the text messages, she came out to find that he had stabbed her son.

“It all happened in seconds,” she texted, according to CAIR. NYTIMES