A young Muslim woman was forced to the ground in a busy shopping precinct and dragged along by her hijab by two men in what police are treating as a racist attack.

The woman, who police said was in her 20s, was walking alone in Chingford, east London, when the two men dressed in black approached her, tried to pull off her headscarf and pushed her to the ground.

She reportedly said she was then dragged along the ground during the struggle.

Police said the attackers, described as two white males aged 17 to 19, ran off north along Old Church Road.

Witnesses told the Evening Standard the victim was lying on the pavement for almost 20 minutes after the attack, before managing to call police and limp to a nearby Turkish restaurant, where she was helped by staff.

Koksal Zeyek, 40, the owner of Fes restaurant on Old Church Road, said his staff first noticed the woman sitting on a table outside.

“My colleague, he went out and talked to her and she was explaining she had been attacked because she had been wearing a scarf – a hijab – and two white men were trying to take off her scarf,” he said.

A waiter at the restaurant told the Evening Standard: “She told us two white guys shoved her then dragged her along the floor by her headscarf and left her on the pavement. She was having a panic attack when we saw her and could barely breathe.”

Zeyek said he noticed that the woman’s injuries were compounded by the scars from a recent operation, and that she was struggling to move.

“I held her hand and I helped her to walk in and she called the police and ambulance,” he said.

“The ambulance didn’t come, the police didn’t turn up and then after 45 minutes first aid came, they checked her blood pressure and then after 15 minutes … the ambulance came. And then 20 minutes after the ambulance, the police came. They took more than one hour or something like that.

“We were shocked as well, don’t get me wrong, because the lady had been attacked. Police didn’t come, the ambulance didn’t come and she was shaking and she was struggling and everything.”

The Metropolitan police said officers answered reports of a woman having been assaulted at 8.35pm on Wednesday. “No arrests have been made. Officers from Waltham Forest CID are investigating,” the force said in a statement.