A French homosexual couple in the city of Lyon was hospitalised after a mob of around 20 people attacked them in what is being considered a homophobic incident.

The public prosecutor in Lyon is said to have started an investigation into the attack which took place in the commune of Villeurbanne in the eastern part of the city around 1 am on Saturday morning, French newspaper Le Parisien reports.

The two victims, a pair of gay men, had just left a friend’s house at around 1am and were accosted by a group of 20 people who shouted insults at them and then physically attacked them in the Buers area.

The couple managed to escape the violence and get to a building where they were able to notify police who arrived on the scene a short time later.

Upon their arrival, the officers were also attacked by around a dozen men armed with iron bars with one police vehicle being damaged during the altercation.

Gay Couples in France Feel Increasingly Threatened, Fear Publicly Displaying Affection https://t.co/tiTgwkRvat — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) October 16, 2018

The victims were later transferred to a local hospital after officers managed to get the situation under control by deploying tear gas to disperse the mob. According to France Info, none of the attackers was arrested following the incident.

Attacks on homosexuals in France saw record highs in 2018 according to the group SOS Homophobie which released a report in May claiming there had been a 66 per cent increase in assaults compared to 2017 for a total of 231 physical attacks.

At least one anti-LGBT assault this year turned deadly after a Tunisian migrant was arrested after allegedly disembowelling one man and stabbing another to death.

Two teens were brought to a French court in April after using the gay dating app Grindr to lure homosexual men to a residential building where they would then attack and rob them.

The case came only months after a pair of radical Islamic extremists were arrested for plotting terror attacks against homosexuals using the same dating app.