MOSCOW - The number of racist attacks in Russia rose dramatically in the first part of the year, with 13 people killed, a Russian human rights group said on Monday.
"In the first quarter of 2007, 49 cases of xenophobic attacks were registered with 13 people dead and 50 injured," Alexander Brod, the head of the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights, told the Interfax news agency.
During the same period a year ago, 30 people were injured and two were killed in xenophobic attacks, while only 22 people were hurt in similar incidents in the first quarter of 2005, according to the organisation.
People originating from former Soviet republics like Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Armenia and Georgia, along with North Koreans and Africans, were the most likely to fall victim to racist attacks, the group said.
At the end of March, another human rights organisation, Sova, said the number of victims of racist attacks had jumped 17 percent in 2006 to 539, out of whom 54 died.
04/09/2007 16:56 GMT