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Rioting teenage children attacked and seriously injured refugee classmates invited into their school in Germany.

Police in Leipzig said a mob of German children, aged 13 and 14, attacked the refugees.

They spat on them, threw sticks and stones, punched, kicked and, in one instance, slammed a door shut on a victim's head.

At least one of the attackers comes from a neo-Nazi family, it has been reported.

All the children are now being investigated for causing grievous bodily harm at the secondary school in Wurzen near the city.

The youngest victim, an 11-year-old girl, suffered a splintered bone in her arm while another girl, 14, needed treatment for crush wounds.

The violence occurred in former communist East Germany where anti-refugee sentiment has been at its highest since Germany instituted an open door policy for migrants.

(Image: Getty Images)

Last week it was revealed that, officially, one million have entered the country this year although the true figure may be far higher.

The victims, all girls, were in the school playground during a break last Wednesday when their tormentors turned on them.

Police said they had been goaded and abused for several weeks before the violence broke out.

"It was like a scene from the Lord of the Flies," said one school worker, referring to the William Golding novel about English schoolboys marooned on a tropical island who descend into depravity when they have no teachers around to keep order.

Roman Schulz, from the local education authority, described the mob violence towards the five young girls - invited into the school to learn German - as "totally unacceptable."

(Image: Getty Images)

Andreas Loepki, a police spokesman, said what had been verbal abuse "took a sinister and violent turn".

He said: "It would be questionable if teachers and the school leadership didn't think it useful to talk with the parents of these children responsible.

"School is no place where a possible far-right political atmosphere is the norm.

"The Saxon education authority, school leadership and police HQ in Leipzig are unwilling to helplessly watch as a new generation of dim young nationalists grow up, just because their parents may tolerate or even encourage it."

The school leadership met over the weekend to try to formulate measures measures to make classes safe for the refugee children.

(Image: Getty)

There have been hundreds of recorded instances of violence against refugees since they began arriving in Germany but this is the most serious involving children on children.

Three other girls pursued by the mob were treated for shock but otherwise unharmed.

On Monday embattled Chancellor Angela Merkel will try to face down critics at her conservative CDU party's conference who are demanding limits to new arrivals.