Jewish restaurant attacked amid German protests

Masked assailants hurled rocks and bottles at a Jewish restaurant, injuring the owner, in an apparently anti-semitic attack on the sidelines of a wave of neo-Nazi protest in an east German city, authorities and reports said Saturday.

A spokesman for the regional interior ministry said "a politically-motivated act with an anti-semitic background was the most plausible" explanation for the attack in Chemnitz.

The city has been convulsed by violent far-right, anti-immigration demonstrations since the killing of a German man, allegedly by asylum-seekers, in late August.

Police in Saxony confirmed to the newspaper Die Welt that they had received a complaint of the attack on the "Schalom" restaurant on the sidelines of the demonstrations.

A mob of around a dozen people, wearing black with their faces covered hurled rocks, bottles and a metal pipe at the restaurant on August 27, according to reports in Die Welt and the Freie Presse newspaper.

Owner Uwe Dziuballa suffered an injury to the shoulder during the attack, the reports said.

The restaurant, which was opened in 2000, has been attacked several times before.