Attackers leave 9-year-old girl dead, father hurt

The Associated Pess

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia -- A group of drunken teenagers beat and stabbed a 9-year-old Tajik girl to death and severely wounded her father and 11-year-old cousin in St. Petersburg, prosecutors said Tuesday.

The attackers -- about 10 to 12 youths armed with knifes, brass knuckles, chains and bats -- assaulted the three Central Asians in a courtyard in the city center Monday night, said Yelena Ordynskaya, spokeswoman for the city's prosecution office.

"The girl received 11 knife wounds and died on the spot," she said. Police identified the girl as Khursheda Sultanova.

Her 34-year-old father, Yusuf Sultanov, and her and 11-year-old cousin were hospitalized but later released.

Many Tajiks and nations of other impoverished former Soviet republics come to Russia in hopes of making a living, and are often targeted in such attacks.

Police said they did not know whether the teenagers belonged to a nationalist group. But St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko told a city government meeting that "We must fight any manifestations of nationalism in our city," the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.

Nazar Mirzada, an official representative of the Tajik community of some 3,500 people in St. Petersburg, said he suspected skinheads in the attack. He said the Sultanovs had come to the city about five months ago, and that the victim's father worked as a porter at the central market.

Last September, city police arrested four people they described as skinheads on suspicion of killing a 6-year-old Tajik girl and injuring two other children, one of them 18 months old, in an attack on a gypsy camp south of the city.

Police accused a gang of skinheads of beating a melon trader from Azerbaijan to death in September 2002, and three skinheads were detained last February on suspicion of killing a student from Mauritius.