Black Teenager Attacked by Possible Right-Wingers in Berlin

Police said they had arrested two teenagers and two men in their early 20s, after the brawl in Schönefeld, on the south-eastern outskirts of the capital.

The suspects had clashed with six youths, including the boy, aged 15, after witnesses heard them shouting racial abuse, the police said.

"We are investigating whether xenophobia was the motive for the attack," the police said in a statement. Police suspect the whites may have been racists, as two of the four arrested were neo-Nazis, and a witness said she had heard racist epithets as the fight began.

Two of the attackers were injured and were in hospital under police guard.

German police have stepped up patrols in the region around Berlin after black groups complained that violent neo-Nazi youths had in effect turned some housing estates and small towns into "no-go areas" for anyone with dark skin.

Germany has seen a spate of apparently race-related attacks in recent weeks that led to fears that far right-wingers could ruin the country's hard-won reputation for tolerance as it hosts the soccer World Cup 2006.

In one of the attacks, an Ethiopian man was beaten so severely that he spent two weeks in a coma. A government report released last month noted that right-wing violence had increased by 23 percent in 2005.