Football hooligans were reportedly behind a spontaneous demonstration on Sunday, organized after a German man was stabbed to death on the previous evening. Eye witnesses reported the demonstrators attacking migrants.

Hooligans in the town of Chemnitz organized a demonstration with hundreds of participants on Sunday in response to the death of a German man in circumstances which remain unclear, public broadcaster MDR reports.

An eyewitness told MDR that some participants ran through a local park and shouted racist slogans before attacking “a migrant” who had tried to flee from them but fell. The men allegedly punched and kicked him as he lay on the ground.

Left-wing “anti-fascist” groups have also reported that participants in the demonstration attacked foreigners who happened to be in the vicinity.

Police called in backup from Leipzig and Dresden to deal with the protest and by Sunday evening the crowd had thinned out from an earlier high point of around 800 people.

The demonstration had been organized spontaneously after a 35-year-old German man was stabbed to death at the end of a city festival the night before. Police have given little detail about the circumstances of the man’s death other than to say that people “of various nationalities” were involved in a confrontation.

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