6 Migrants Injured in Attack Initially Linked to Skinheads

Six migrant workers were hospitalized Monday in Moscow with knife wounds and other injuries after a brawl that officials initially described as an attack by skinheads celebrating Adolf Hitler's birthday.City police spokespeople later denied that nationalists were involved in the fight that broke out at about 7 a.m. Monday at a construction site on Mosfilmovsky Pereulok in western Moscow, saying all those involved were of the same ethnicity."There were no skinheads or members of other youth groups there," police spokeswoman Natalya Tolstobrova told Rossia television.A Federal Migration Service official told Interfax that all 20 men involved in the brawl were natives of the restive North Caucasus republic of Dagestan.Initial reports from national news agencies stated that as many as 20 skinheads attacked 15 Tajik and Uzbek construction workers before fleeing.The Interior Ministry on Monday pledged to prevent any violence by nationalist groups on the occasion of Hitler's birthday, April 20, which is traditionally chosen by skinheads to carry out attacks against dark-skinned migrants.Police beefed up security Monday in areas inhabited by large numbers of foreigners, a ministry official told Interfax.Meanwhile, at least two outdoor markets along Leningradskoye Shosse in northern Moscow were closed by officials Monday. A vendor in a nearby shop told The Moscow Times that authorities closed the markets, where hundreds of migrant workers are employed, to head off any possible violence by nationalists.The bulk of retail traders at the Moscow markets are migrants from former Soviet republics in Central Asia and the Caucasus.