Shi’ah boy killed in Madinah

Rasa – A Saudi little boy, while on a pilgrimage to the holy city of Madinah with his Shi’ah ‎mother, has been barbarously killed for unknown reasons, fueling speculations that he could ‎have been a sectarian and hate crime victim, media reports say. ‎

News ID: 443372

Date: 09 February 2019 - 20:08

RNA – A Saudi little boy, while on a pilgrimage to the holy city of Madinah with his Shi’ah ‎mother, has been barbarously killed for unknown reasons, fueling speculations that he could ‎have been a sectarian and hate crime victim, media reports say. ‎

According to what circulated on social media, Zakariya Badir al-Jabir – said to be six or seven ‎years old – was savagely murdered by a taxi driver in front of his mother late last month. ‎

His mother’s recitation of salutations for the family of Prophet Muhammad outraged the taxi ‎driver who, according to “witnesses,” broke the window of his car, before grabbing the ‎‎“seven-year-old” boy by the back of his shirt and slitting his throat in front of his mother. ‎

According to Press TV, the mother and the child had taken a taxi on their way to al-Masjid al-Nabawi Mosque in the ‎middle of the day, when the driver “pulled over the car, got out, and forced the boy out of ‎the car near a coffee shop in the al-Tilal neighborhood.” ‎

‎“The taxi driver then broke a glass bottle to obtain a shard of glass, which he then used to ‎cut the throat of the child and stab him,” the report said. ‎

Onlookers are quoted as saying a policeman who happened to be stationed nearby had also ‎attempted to stop the man from attacking the child but was unsuccessful in saving the boy. ‎The policeman restrained the man until police backup was called. ‎

But there is no concrete evidence of any of this; the boy was killed, but the motivation ‎behind the attack remains unknown, and no details of the alleged killer have emerged.‎

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