Police in the Austrian city of Innsbruck are searching for a group of men “of foreign appearance” in connection with a series of sexual assaults on women during New Year celebrations.

Nineteen women have so far come forward to identify themselves as victims of the assaults, which are reminiscent of the Cologne sex attacks of New Year’s Eve in 2015.

The women said they had been harassed by groups of up to ten men in the city centre, Ernst Kranebitter, a spokesman for the local police, said.

The men encircled the women then grabbed their breasts or put their hands between the women’s legs.

The incidents left Innsbruck, a deeply conservative city of some 130,000 people amid the high Alps of western Austria, in shock.

“This has never happened to us before,” Ch Insp Kranebitter said. “It has definitely been proved that the men are foreign. We are investigating.”