A student from Senegal was shot dead in the Russian city of Saint Petersburg as he left a night club

AFP:

The student, who had recently graduated from a technical college specialising in telecommunications, was gunned down outside the Apollo nightclub in the centre of Saint Petersburg, Russia's second biggest city, according to Desire Defaut, chairperson of the local community organisation African Unity.

"About five or six people were leaving when unknown people shot at them. As a result, one of them fell and it turned out he was dead," Defaut told AFP.

"The attacker shot from behind and no one saw how many there were."

Police were not immediately available to comment. Interfax news agency quoted an unnamed city police source confirming the report.

Racist violence connected to Russian ultra-nationalists and neo-fascists is widely considered a growing problem, particularly in the capital Moscow and in Saint Petersburg, where President Vladimir Putin will host the Group of Eight (G8) summit in July.

According to an independent study prior to Friday's reported incident, six people have been killed and 79 injured in more than 40 racist attacks around the country since the start of the year.

The non-governmental organisation Sova said that 30 attacks and five deaths took place in Moscow.

In Saint Petersburg 14 people have been injured and one killed, not including Friday's incident.

In 2005, 28 people were killed and 366 injured in racially motivated crimes, Sova said.

Many of the racist attacks are by bands of skinheads targeting people from the Caucasus and former Soviet states of central Asia, although students and workers from Asia and Africa have also been singled out.

Just in the last week youths beat up a television journalist of Caucasian origin in Moscow and the culture minister from the Russian Caucasus region of Kabardino-Balkaria, also in the capital.

On March 26 a nine-year-old girl of mixed race was wounded in a knife attack in Saint Petersburg.

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