Golden Dawn Suspected of Stabbing 19-Year-Old Iraqi Man to Death

A young Iraqi man has been stabbed to death in Athens by five men on motorbikes, the latest in a series of attacks against foreigners in Greece.

The 19-year-old died in hospital of injuries sustained from a sharp object. A police spokesman said the assailants had earlier tried to attack a Romanian and a Moroccan in the same area.

Greece's minister of public order, Nikos Dendias, pledged to punish the perpetrators "no matter what pretext they used".

The murder comes during a nationwide campaign of migrant expulsions, organised by the government, and follows a violent assault by members of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party on a police vehicle carrying a Pakistani murder suspect.

Golden Dawn, which first gained notoriety in 1991 by attacking Albanian immigrants and participating in the massacre of Muslims in Bosnia, has seen a steady rise in support during Greece's economic crisis. Its share of the vote has risen from 0.46 to 7 percent in three years.

The party's main policy is to rid Greece of all illegal immigrants. Its members have previously committed several attacks on Afghani and Pakistani immigrants, often on motorbikes.