(Washington) US President Joe Biden said Monday he was “deeply troubled” by reports of an attempted drowning of a Palestinian-American child in Texas in May.
Local media and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) reported the May 19 arrest of a 42-year-old woman after an assault in a high-rise swimming pool in the suburb of Euless between Dallas and Fort Worth.
After asking the mother, wearing a hijab, if the 3-year-old girl and a 6-year-old boy in the pool were hers, the woman shouted racist insults at her and tried to drag them into the deep end in the pool. apparent intention to drown them, according to the same sources.
The boy managed to struggle but the little girl had to be rescued by a man called to the rescue by witnesses, local media said.
President Joe Biden said on his official X account that he was “deeply disturbed” by this apparent murder attempt. “No child should ever suffer a violent attack,” he added.
The war in Gaza between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas is causing strong tensions in the United States, particularly on university campuses, and has led to an increase in anti-Semitic and Islamophobic acts.
In November, a man shot and wounded three students of Palestinian origin in Vermont (northeast). And in early October, a six-year-old Muslim boy was stabbed to death near Chicago (north) by a septuagenarian, a crime directly linked to the ongoing war in Gaza according to police.
