New racist attack in Germany, Sudanese badly hurt

MAINZ, Germany, Aug 25, 2007 (AFP) - Two Africans were attacked by right-wing extremists last weekend in Mainz, in western Germany, local authorities said Saturday, the same night as a brutal mob assault on eight Indians in the country's former communist east.

Mainz authorities said they delayed releasing the information for a week so as not to hamper the inquiry into the incident, in which a Sudanese man in his 20s was seriously injured.

They said a group of young right-wing Germans had attacked the Sudanese man and an Egyptian on the fringes of a wine festival in Guntersblum in the Rhineland Palatinate region.

The Sudanese man was hit on the head with a bottle and beaten while he was on the ground. The 39-year-old Egyptian, who tried to get help, was also struck with the neck of the bottle.

Local people intervened to rescue the men and three suspects, all in their 20s, were arrested.

The head of the Rhineland-Palatinate regional government and leader of the local Social Democratic Party (SPD), Kurt Beck, called it a cowardly attack.

The Indians were also attacked during a summer festival on Saturday night in the small town of Muegeln. A 50-strong mob of suspected neo-Nazis chased them through the streets of the town and broke down the doors of a pizzeria where they had sought refuge.

Three of the Indians were so brutally beaten they needed hospital treatment while the others escaped with minor cuts and bruises.

The deputy president of the European Commission, Franco Frattini, called for the banning of the neo-Nazi NPD party after the attack in Muegeln.

He said neo-Nazis represented "a threat" and "an ulcerous cancer for democratic countries like Germany" in an interview to appear in the Bild am Sonntag newspaper on Sunday.

"Xenophobis and right-wing extremism is on the rise throughout Europe" but "Germany is one of the five countries which we are most concerned about, along with France, Belgium, Denmark, and alas, my own native country, Italy," Frattini said.

Racist attacks have been common since reunification in east Germany, where the NPD is making a particular push to get established.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has denounced the mob attack in Muegeln, calling it "deplorable and shameful" that no-one had intervened to stop it and said it had damaged Germany's image abroad.

Source: Sudan