Latvia's leaders condemned on Wednesday an attack by vandals on a Jewish cemetery which left about 100 headstones daubed with white swastikas.

Such vandalism is rare in Latvia. Nazi hunter groups sometimes criticise the Baltic state for doing too little to pursue Latvians who killed Jews in the Holocaust, when most of the pre-war Jewish population was wiped out.

Open gallery view Tombstones desecrated by vandals with Nazi swastikas are seen at the New Jewish Cemetery in Riga December 8, 2010. Credit: Reuters

"We absolutely condemn vandalism in Jewish cemeteries and call for everything to be done to find those responsible and repair the damage," President Valdis Zatlers told a news conference after talks with Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis.

The Riga city council said in a statement that the acts of vandalism took place in the cemetery in the capital on Tuesday night. It gave no details but Latvian television showed pictures of the grave stones daubed with white swastikas.

The German invasion in 1941 followed a year of Soviet occupation, during which Latvia was forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union and many Latvians were shipped to Siberia, including Jews.

