Berlin: German police said Tuesday they have arrested 211 far-right extremists who went on a rampage on the sidelines of a xenophobic rally in Leipzig, setting cars on fire and smashing windows.


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The extremists are known to police as football hooligans, and had wrought chaos Monday at an area of the eastern city known to be left-leaning, just as thousands of far-right supporters of the anti-migrant PEGIDA movement were gathering at a peaceful demonstration, authorities said.


News website Spiegel Online also published a picture of a kebab shop with a smashed window.
Germany has been outraged by a rash of crime targeting women at New Year`s festivities in Cologne in the west that has been blamed on migrants.


As thousands rallied to blame refugees for the violence, a group of hooligans broke away and smashed windows, burned cars and rubbish bins and shot off pyrotechnics that set a floor of a building on fire.


In return, left-wing radicals vandalised a bus that had been chartered by the hooligans, police said.
In all, 57 offences were committed that night, police said.


Germany has recorded a sharp jump in crime attributed to the far-right in tandem with the surge in asylum seeker arrivals which reached 1.1 million last year.


Police said groups linked to Cologne`s extremist hooligan scene had used social media to organise gatherings in the inner city Sunday evening, and launched a spate of attacks against Pakistani, Syrian and African men.