- Over 2,000 mourners honor men killed defending the mosque.
- The FBI is investigating the attack as a suspected hate crime.
- Mourners call for an end to anti-Muslim hatred.
SAN DIEGO: More than 2,000 people gathered in a San Diego park on Thursday to mourn a security guard and two other men who were killed as they tried to stop this week’s attack on the city’s largest mosque.
Men and women, including police officers in uniform, lined up for the funeral prayer, or Janazah, to remember the three men who were hailed as heroes by mourners to delay and distract the attackers and prevent further bloodshed at a time when children were in the mosque’s school.
The bodies of the men, Amin Abdullah, 51, Mansour Kaziha, 78, and Nadir Awad, 57, lay under rags and blankets, under a white canopy.
“[Allahu Akbar] God is the greatest,” mourners shouted in Arabic, raising their hands at the service in a park sandwiched between the city’s river and a soccer stadium.
The three men were to be buried together in a nearby cemetery later in the day.
“Today is a message for everyone. Our community was hurt, but our community is standing strong and firm,” said the center’s imam, Taha Hassane, adding that people had traveled from the eastern United States and across California to serve.
The FBI is investigating the attack as a suspected hate crime, and the killings have put Muslims across the United States on edge at a time of rising Islamophobia.
Grieving Ruba Abu Jamah, who knew all three men, called for an end to the hatred of Muslims she believed inspired the attackers. She questioned why the mother of one of the teenage suspects, who warned police that her son was suicidal, allegedly allowed him access to guns.
“For God’s sake, why are we going backwards? Hatred is taking us backwards,” Abu Jamah said after hearses took the men’s bodies for burial. “Mothers, don’t have a whole display of guns if you know your 16-year-old is depressed.”
Abdullah was shot and killed in a gun battle with the teenage assailants as he used his radio to call for a lockdown procedure, police said.
Kaziha, the center’s handyman and cook, as well as Awad, whose wife is a teacher at the center and who lived across the street from the mosque, were shot dead by the attackers after they heard gunshots and ran towards the center.
Abdullah’s actions are credited with delaying the assailants’ entry into the center, where 140 students were hiding in closets and other rooms, police said.
The assailants fled the mosque in their vehicle and were later found dead in the car from self-inflicted gunshot wounds, police said.
Khaled Abdullah, 24, the security guard’s son, said his family has drawn strength from the way his father died.
“The fact that he was on the front lines trying to defend children and innocent people, it makes me feel good,” Khaled said. Reuters on Wednesday. “Calling him a hero is the least we can do.”
