Brandenburg Gate in Berlin Image by Lilit Marcus

(JTA) — A Jewish Syrian man was assaulted in a park in Berlin by a group of men and women who he asked for a light for his cigarette after they noticed he was wearing a Star of David.

The 10 men and women ages 15 to 21 were detained in the park following the assault on Saturday night, and later released pending an investigation, the German news service Deutsche Welle reported. The group included six Syrians and three Germans, according to the report.

The victim told Deutsche Welle that when a member of the group saw his Star of David he shouted “anti-Semitic insults,” grabbed the cigarette from his mouth and punched him.

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The group chased him, knocked him to the ground and beat him, according to the report. He was hospitalized for his injuries.

The attackers ran away when passersby came to help the downed man.

The attack comes days after a Syrian man, 19, was found guilty of an April attack against an Israeli man who was wearing a kippah on a Berlin street. The attacker lashed the man with his belt while shouting the Arabic word for Jew, “Yahudi.” The victim, who is not Jewish, had placed the kippah on his head as an experiment to see “how bad it is to walk Berlin’s streets as a Jew today.”

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