Man knifes worshippers at Moscow synagogue

MOSCOW - A young man wielding a knife and shouting "Heil Hitler" ran amok in a synagogue in central Moscow today, wounding eight people, witnesses said.

A US, an Israeli and a Tajik citizen were among the eight wounded, Moscow Prosecutor Anatoly Zuyev said.

"He stabbed a security guard and ran into the synagogue and started stabbing," said Joseph Kogan, 18, his shirt flecked with blood.

"I grabbed him by the neck and pushed him to the floor. Then I noticed he had a big knife ... People said he was shouting 'Heil Hitler' and 'I'll kill you, I'll kill you'."

Racist attacks have mushroomed in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union, mostly carried out by young men attracted to extreme right-wing views.

Zuyev said the man was under arrest and promised to bring him to trial as soon as possible.

"He accompanied his actions ... with cries that pointed to national and religious hatred," he told reporters at the scene.

Russian Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar blamed a fascist "plague" for the attack.

"In places where the ideas of fascism are propagandised, in the end without fail they will turn into reality, as happened today in Moscow," he told news agency Interfax by telephone from Jerusalem, saying he would cut short his trip to Israel.

An Israeli government report has ranked Russia third after France and Britain for instances of anti-Semitic violence. More than a million Jews left for Israel in the last years of the Soviet Union, but around a million remain.

Last year, a nationalist party was barred from Moscow's city elections after a campaign clip urged people to "clean the city of rubbish" after showing a group of darker-skinned men from the Russian Caucasus.

Dozens of African and Asian nationals have also been targeted by neo-Nazi groups.

- REUTERS