Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register Police in New Mexico and federal agencies have been investigating the killings of four Muslim men to determine whether the murders, the latest of which occurred Friday night, are connected, and the state’s governor has described them as “targeted killings.” Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina told reporters Saturday that “a young man who belongs to the Muslim community has been murdered.” The name of the victim and the circumstances of the killing were not released. In the three previous cases, the victims were ambushed and shot without warning, police said. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register Medina said the killing is possibly connected to the three previous killings. Police in New Mexico had earlier said the three other Muslim men killed in the state’s largest city in the past nine months appeared to have been targeted for their religion and race. read more “The targeted killings of Muslim residents of Albuquerque are deeply infuriating and completely intolerable,” New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham tweeted late Saturday. He also said he is sending additional state police officers to Albuquerque to help with the investigation. Two of those murdered men were members of the same mosque that were shot and killed in Albuquerque in late July and early August. Police said there was a “strong possibility” their deaths were linked to the killing of an Afghan migrant in November. Muhammad Afzaal Hussain, 27, a planning director for the city of Espanola who came to the United States from Pakistan, was shot Monday outside his Albuquerque apartment complex, while Aftab Hussein, 41, was found shot dead July 26 near in Albuquerque’s International District. Those deaths are likely linked to the shooting of 62-year-old Mohammad Ahmadi in a supermarket and halal cafe parking lot on November 7 last year, police said. New Mexico State Police, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the US Marshals Service are among several agencies involved in the investigation into the killings. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington. Editor: Lisa Shumaker Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
