WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden expressed solidarity with the Muslim community on Sunday after a fourth Muslim man was killed in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in what authorities are describing as targeted attacks.
Biden, in a Twitter post after news of the fourth death, said he was angered and saddened by the killings.
“While we await a full investigation, my prayers are with the victims’ families, and my administration stands strongly with the Muslim community,” Biden said in a Twitter post. “These hateful attacks have no place in America.”
Police in New Mexico and federal agencies were probing the killings, the latest of which occurred on Friday evening.
The other three Muslim men killed in the state’s largest city in the past nine months appeared to have been targeted for their religion and race, police have said.
Two of those murdered men were members of the same mosque, who were shot dead in Albuquerque in late July and early August. Police said there was a “strong possibility” their deaths were connected to the November killing of an Afghan immigrant.
New Mexico State Police, the FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service are among the agencies helping in the investigation.
New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham said in a Twitter post late on Saturday, “The targeted killings of Muslim residents of Albuquerque is deeply angering and wholly intolerable.”
(Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
