BBC NEWS | Europe | Girl killed by Russia 'racists' (original) (raw)

Moscow market

A skinhead attack on a Moscow market had left three dead in 2001

A nine-year old Tajik girl has been stabbed to death in the Russian city of St Petersburg by suspected skinheads.

Police said a group of youths armed with knives and bats attacked the girl on Monday night, stabbing her 11 times.

Her father and an 11-year old boy were also hospitalized with head wounds.

The attack was being widely seen in Russia as racist in origin.

St Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko, who described the attack as "bestial", said they must combat any manifestations of nationalism in the city.

"This crime is comparable to the terrorist act in the Moscow underground railway," she said.

"It is different in scale but these events are of the same order."

At least 39 people died last week in Moscow when a suspected suicide bomber detonated a bomb on an underground train.

'Skinhead gangs'

St Petersburg police named the man injured in Monday's attack as Yusuf Sultanov, 34, from Tajikistan.

He was with his daughter, Hurshida, and an 11-year old boy, Alabir, when they were attacked in a courtyard.

A report by Russia TV said investigators were confident that St Petersburg-based skinheads were behind the incident.

There were several small but well-organised neo-Nazi groups in the city, the report said.

There have been several racist attacks in Moscow and other large Russian cities in the past, targeting foreign students, diplomats or immigrants from former Soviet Republics.

An estimated 300 skinheads attacked market places in Moscow two years ago, killing three people.

Chanting racist slogans, they smashed up market stalls and attacked anyone who appeared to be from the Caucasus region.