Council on American Islamic Relations-Michigan Executive Director Dawud Walid speaks to reporters in Ann Arbor about the alleged assault. PHOTO: Nick Meyer/TAAN

ANN ARBOR — A16-year-old Arab American girl was returning from her first day of high school when she was attacked by multiple assailants Tuesday, according to police, family members and a rights group that’s calling for the assault to be investigated as a hate crime.

Ann Arbor police are investigating the assault on the Iraqi American that left her with various injuries, including one that required six stitches on her face.

The incident began around 3:20 p.m. when the girl was grabbed and had her hijab (head scarf) pulled off “as soon as she got off the last step (of the school bus),” according to her 15-year-old brother.

The bus had dropped several students off at North Maple Road in Ann Arbor across from the North Maple Estates subdivision where the girl and her family, which includes her mother, father, and nine siblings, lived. Family members asked not to be identified by name or photographed because they feared for their safety.

The girl was returning home from her first day of school at Skyline High School in Ann Arbor. An argument had broken out on the bus prior to the attack but the bus driver believed it had been settled, according to news reports.

The five-to-seven student attackers, reportedly described as African Americans, allegedly said “F*** Arabs” and “Arabs are dirty” during the attack, which continued with the girl being dragged to the front area of the Estates near the family’s house, where more than ten other attackers waited, including an older man and an older woman. The girl’s siblings believed them to be parents of one of the students, who were all either freshmen or sophomores.

The girl’s 15-year-old brother initially pushed one of the attackers off of her but was also assaulted and kicked in the back and jaw by multiple attackers. The girl’s 20-year-old sister also was pushed against a white car and had her hijab removed when she tried to stop the attacks along with her father. She said that her 16-year-old sister “might have been dead” if she and her father hadn’t intervened.

Ann Arbor police had no comment on the incident, which is under investigation.

Council on American Islamic Relations-Michigan (CAIR-MI) Executive Director Dawud Walid said the organization is pushing for the attack to be treated as a hate crime.

“Because of the slurs reportedly used during this attack, we urge local, state, and national law enforcement authorities to consider hate crime charges for any perpetrators,” he said.

Walid said that the focus now is making sure the kids and other Arabs and Muslims can feel safe and comfortable in their neighborhood and in school.

“Besides local law enforcement, we are hopeful that Ann Arbor Public Schools will take measures to discuss diversity and specifically to allow some type of discussing and training in schools about who Muslims and Arabs are,” he said.

“At the end of the day, we don’t want the situation to be cleared up but for people and students to [continue to] have animosity towards Muslims and Arabs. We want a healthy community and learning environment for all children.”

The family plans to continue living at North Maple Estates, where they’ve stayed for about six months, but said they will no longer take the bus. Their father now plans to drive them back and forth to school.

They said that in a previous incident in the neighborhood, the father was spat upon and called a “F***ing Arab” about a month ago, an incident that ended with them calling police, who told them to call again if other problems arose.

The family believed it to be an isolated incident at the time, however, according to the 15-year-old brother.

“We had thought it was a good neighborhood,” he said.