Three Palestinians murdered in US in suspected hate crime

Three Palestinian college students, Hisham Awartani, Kinnan Abdel Hamid, and Tahseen Ahmed, were shot and wounded in a hate-motivated attack in Burlington, Vermont.

The incident occurred near the University of Vermont campus. Two of the victims are US citizens and the third is a legal US resident.

All three are 20 years old. At the time of the attack, two of the men were wearing keffiyehs, the traditional black-and-white checkered scarves worn in the Middle East, especially in Palestine.

They were reported to have been speaking Arabic when attacked.

The assailant, identified as Jason J. Eaton, 48, approached the students on the street and fired four shots, hitting two in the torso and the third below the waist. Eaton was arrested on the afternoon of the day of the accident.

The victims are graduates of the Ramallah Friends School, a private Quaker secondary school in the occupied West Bank.

Awartani is a student at Brown University, Abdel Hamid at Haverford College, and Ahmed at Trinity College.

Two of the students were visiting the home of the third student's family in Burlington for the Thanksgiving holiday.

The three victims three remained under medical care, with two in stable condition and one suffering more serious injuries.