An imam in Newark, near New York, was seriously injured in Wednesday’s shooting and was hospitalized in critical condition, police in Newark, New Jersey, said, according to AFP.

Police responded at dawn after a man was shot one or more times outside a mosque in the industrial and multicultural city, according to an email from Newark Public Safety.

“The victim was taken to University Hospital and appears to be in critical condition,” said Fritz Frage, Newark’s director of public safety, without specifying a motive for the shooting.

His spokeswoman confirmed to AFP that the man, whom she did not identify, “is indeed the imam” of the city, located west of Manhattan across the Hudson River, and that “the incident happened near a mosque.”

“We are deeply troubled by this incident and pray for the imam’s speedy recovery,” the New Jersey chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an organization that advocates for Islam and American Muslims, said in a statement.

Since the start of the Gaza war between Israel and the Palestinian movement Hamas, the United States, and especially New York and its northeastern region, has been rocked by a series of demonstrations, inter-ethnic tensions and sporadic violence.

New York City alone, with a population of 8.5 million, is home to nearly two million American Jews, the second largest population after Israel, and hundreds of thousands of Muslims.