Neo-Nazis are suspected of carrying out an arson attack on a refugee hostel in the western German city of Ludwigshafen early yesterday in which an 11-year-old Kosovan girl was seriously burned. Two other children and a woman were injured in the attack, which coincided with a warning by the head of Germany's Jewish community about growing neo-Nazi violence by young people.
The attack was the latest of several assaults by far-right groups on foreigners and vagrants in Germany.
Kosovan refugees at the hostel in the Ludwigshafen suburb of Oppau said a birthday party was interrupted at 1.30am by the sound of breaking glass and an explosion of fire "like a big rocket".
One of the refugees, an 11-year-old girl, suffered severe burns to her legs and two other children aged 12 and 14 were injured by flying glass.
All three and a woman resident who suffered scalp burns after her hair caught fire were taken to hospital.
"We came to Germany to escape being attacked. We cannot understand what is going on," one of the refugees said in a radio interview.
Police said the hostel residents put out the fire, which was started by a homemade petrol bomb. They said far-right extremists were suspected of carrying out the attack.
The head of Germany's 85,000-strong Jewish community, Paul Spiegel, said in an interview published yesterday that he was "greatly concerned" by an increase in extreme rightwing violence among young Germans.
"Today the violence is directed against foreigners, tomorrow it will be against the handicapped and the day after tomorrow against sexual minorities. In the end it will be against democratic society. It was like that in Weimar times," he told Welt am Sonntag newspaper.
Yesterday's attack was the latest of several unprovoked assaults. On Friday five skinheads aged 19-22 confessed to killing a 52-year-old vagrant man in the east German city of Wismar. His body was discovered by the police on Wednesday.
Last month a 39-year-old Mozambican man was kicked to death by three skinheads after he boarded a bus in the eastern city of Dessau.
The head of Germany's domestic intelligence services, Heinz Fromm, admitted in an interview at the weekend that rightwing extremism was on the increase.
"It seems to me that its attraction is growing among young people," Mr Fromm said. "The far right seems to think that its philosophy is accepted by a large part of the population, because there is no reaction when something bad happens."
