August 21, 2007	Tuesday	Sha’aban 7, 1428

BERLIN, Aug 20: Eight Indian men were injured in a possible racist attack by about 50 Germans at a fair in eastern Germany over the weekend, police said on Monday. Four assailants and two police officers were also injured in the incident in the town of Muegeln, which started with a scuffle on the dance floor of a party tent in the early hours of Sunday.

“A group of about 50 Germans and several onlookers then chased the escaping Indians across the market square,” said Ilka Peter, a spokeswoman for police in nearby Leipzig.

The Indians sought shelter in a pizza parlour run by an Indian, but some of the Germans kicked in the doors of the building and beat them up, she said.

“We were told that some people were shouting ‘foreigners get out’, but we don’t know if those slurs came from the onlookers or the attackers,” Peter said, adding that 70 police officers were needed to bring the situation under control.

Two suspects were detained after the attack but later released. One Indian man remained hospitalised on Monday, Peter said.

One of the victims said that he was hit with a bottle in the tent and that one of his eyes was injured. Kulvir Singh, 39, said that others were attacked with teargas and beaten, adding that, without help from police, they might have been beaten to death.

In the beginning the situation got so out of control that even police “could not do anything against the mob,” Singh said.

Muegeln mayor Gotthard Deuse said on MDR television that the incident may have had a racist motivation. However, he contended that “if this was a far-right incident, then the assailants did not come from Muegeln”.

Peter said police were told before the fair that right-wing extremists were planning an attack on a youth centre in Muegeln, but the club was not targeted.

The Indian men are mostly merchants who sell goods at open markets in the region, Peter said.—AP