Palestinian government condemns Chapel Hill killings as 'terrorism,' requests role in hate-crime probe

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry condemned the murder of three Palestinian-Americans in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, earlier this week as "terrorism," Reuters reports.

"We consider (the killings) a serious indication of the growth of racism and religious extremism which is a direct threat to the lives of hundreds of thousands of American citizens who follow the Islamic faith," the ministry said in a statement released Saturday.

Palestine also requested that its own investigators be included in a probe into whether Tuesday's shooting of Deah Barakat, 23, his wife Yusor Abu-Salha, 21, and her sister Razan Abu-Salha, 19, was indeed a hate-crime. The ministry called Craig Stephen Hicks, who has been charged in the murders, "an American extremist and hateful racist."

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