World

Three students of Palestinian descent shot in US

Police and federal agents searched on Sunday for a gunman who shot and wounded three college students of Palestinian descent in Burlington, Vermont, in what investigators suspect was a hate-motivated crime, authorities said.

A man with a pistol shot the three victims on the street near the University of Vermont on Saturday evening and then ran away, Burlington police said in a statement.

Video obtained by Reuters showed police at the scene of the shooting on Saturday and first responders treating one of the victims.

Two victims are U.S. citizens and the third is a legal U.S. resident, all 20 years old, police said. Two of the men were wearing a keffiyeh, the traditional black-and-white checkered scarf of Middle Eastern dress, at the time of the attack, police said.

Hisham Awartani, a student at Brown University in Rhode Island; Kinnan Abdel Hamid, a student at Haverford College in Pennsylvania; and Tahseen Ahmed, who attends Trinity College in Connecticut, were all shot near the university and were being treated for injuries of varying severity, according to police.