Kosovan children hurt in asylum hostel attack

A fire-bomb attack on a hostel for asylum-seekers in the German town of Ludwigshafen has left three Kosovan children injured, one of them seriously.

Police have started a large-scale hunt for the attackers, who threw a petrol-bomb through a ground-floor window at the back of the hostel in the early hours of yesterday morning. An 11-yearold girl suffered serious burns to both legs, while a 12-year-old girl and a 14-year-old boy sustained cuts to their hands from broken glass. Police were not ruling out a xenophobic motive for the attack on the building, which houses 30 asylum-seekers, but they said yesterday that they were investigating "in all directions".

Germany's Interior Minister, Mr Otto Schily, called yesterday for a focused effort to wean young Germans, especially in the east, away from the ideology of the extreme right. But he said that organised neo-Nazis should face the full force of the law.

The President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Mr Paul Siegel, said society must act swiftly to stamp out prejudice against foreigners before it infected the entire body politic.