MOSCOW: A Jewish teacher in the Russian city of St Petersburg has been stabbed to death and a leading rabbi said on Sunday he suspected the attack was ethnically motivated.

Rabbi Berel Lazar said the teacher had been killed at the door of his apartment on Saturday. He had been stabbed several times on the face and the chest.

Russia has witnessed a rise in racist attacks in recent years. Observers say resurgent Russian national pride and the collapse of communist order have fuelled this increase.

“The information available for now leads to serious suspicion that the crime was ethnically motivated,” Lazar said in a statement. “The victim sustained more than a dozen stab wounds and nothing was stolen.” President Vladimir Putin has described the rise in racist attacks as a threat to national security and called for the courts and police to step up their efforts to stamp them out.—Reuters