A group of Syrians is suspected of assaulting a Jewish Syrian man wearing a Star of David necklace in Berlin on Saturday.
The 25-year-old victim said he got into an argument after asking a group of men and women for a cigarette lighter in the German capital's central Mitte district.
He said one of the men spotted the Star of David and launched an anti-Semitic tirade, ultimately punching him.
The victim ran away but was chased and then punched and kicked by several people in the group.
Three women and seven men aged 15-21 – including six Syrians and three German nationals – were detained in the park after passersby intervened on behalf of the victim, who was later hospitalized for his injuries.
The German daily newspaper Welt reported that all the suspects involved were Syrians.
The suspects were released after several hours in custody pending further investigation.
Saturday's attack was the latest to raise alarm about renewed anti-Semitism in Germany from both the local far-right population and a large influx of predominantly Muslim asylum seekers since 2015.
On June 25, a Berlin court convicted a 19-year-old Syrian of causing serious bodily harm and slander after he attacked a man wearing a kippah in the German capital in April.
In the wake of the attack, thousands of Germans of different faiths donned kippot and took to the streets in several cities to express solidarity and voice their concerns about increasing anti-Semitic violence in the country.
The victim, a 21-year-old Arab Israeli who said he wore the kippah as a display of solidarity with his Jewish friends, filmed his attacker whipping him with a belt and shouting "Yahudi!" ("Jew" in Arabic).
The defendant, whose name was suppressed due to privacy laws, had arrived in Germany in 2015 seeking asylum.
He was sentenced to four weeks of juvenile detention, the maximum under Germany's juvenile criminal law. The court had ruled that he was not mature enough to be tried as an adult, despite his age.
Having already spent more than two months in detention while awaiting trial, he was immediately released.
Sigmount Königsberg, the Berlin Jewish community's anti-Semitism commissioner, told Berlin-based broadcaster 105.5 Spreeradio that the ruling was "an absolute joke."
