The attack is the latest in a string of apparently racially motivated incidents to have hit the city in recent years. A student from Senegal was shot to death in an apparently racially motivated killing earlier this month; a Chinese student was treated after being attacked outside her apartment block Sunday, while a nine-year-old girl of mixed Russian and African origin was hospitalized after being stabbed near her apartment building March 25.
On March 24, a 34-year-old Ghanaian man was beaten up in the Kolpino suburb of St. Petersburg. Two young men have been arrested in connection with the attack, police said.
Other violent attacks on non-white foreigners in St. Petersburg in recent months include an attack on a man from Mali, who was stabbed to death in February, and the murder of a student from Cameroon last December and of a Congolese student in September.
Routine attacks by skinheads and youth gangs on foreigners with non-Slavic features have also been reported in other Russian cities.
The central city of Voronezh alone has seen at least seven apparently racially motivated killings over the past six years, including the murder of a Peruvian student in October last year.