Hate symbols, including two swastikas, were sprayed on the back wall of restaurant and its windows were smashed during an attack in Syke, a town in northern Germany, early on Thursday morning.

The restaurant appears to then have been deliberately set on fire in what police are investigating as a probable arson attack. Fire services evacuated six people after the fire threatened to spread to a neighboring house, a police spokesperson said.

A 'xenophobic motive'

A "xenophobic motive" was the most likely reason for the incident, said police on Thursday. The man who ran the restaurant was from Syke but had a migrant background, added the State Protection office — the German office responsible for politically-motivate crime.

A search is underway to find those who carried out the attack which caused upwards of €150,000 ($163,271) in damages, but the police say they have currently no leads to follow.

Read more: Germany: Number of right-wing extremists rose by a third in 2019

The attack follows just under a month after the German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer banned neo-Nazi group "Combat 18" from operating in Germany, saying its purpose was "similar to national socialism."

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