North Ealing London Underground station (Photo: Ben Brooksbank/WikiCommons)

Elham Asaad Buaras

Police are appealing for witnesses to a vicious Islamophobic attack in Ealing, west London, last month which left one elderly Muslim woman with broken ribs and another with internal bleeding.

A closed circuit TV photograph has been released by the British Transport Police (BTP) of a woman they want to trace in connection with the shocking assault which took place at 5.30 pm on August 23 at North Ealing London Underground station.
BTP said the anonymous women, one in her 60s and another in her 30s, suffered verbal abuse for wearing the hijab.

“Shortly afterwards they were physically assaulted, leaving the elder of the two with potentially broken ribs and the younger victim with a black eye, bruising and internal bleeding,” reported a spokesman for BTP.

Hate crime in the capital has steadily increased in the last decade, with 1,323 cases of Islamophobic hate crime reported across the city from July 2018 to 2019, compared to 350 in 2010.

In total, more than 5,680 cases of religious hate crime were reported across the UK from 2017 to 2018, with 52 per cent of those relating to crimes against Muslims that were motivated by the victim’s faith.