Authorities have warned about the rise of the far-right in eastern Germany: AFP/Getty Images

German youths performed a Hitler salute as they stabbed a journalist in the street in Germany.

Freelance reporter Klaus-Peter Krummling was attacked after leaving a supermarket in Naumburg, a city in the north-east state of Saxony-Anhalt.

The 59-year-old had confronted the three teenagers after one of them spat at his car and swore at him on Friday evening, reported Naumburger Tageblatt, a local newspaper he works for.

One of the youths lunged at the journalist with a knife while another performed a Nazi salute.

“Only later in the car did I see that my stomach was wet and everything was red. Once I was home, I alerted the police,” he told the newspaper.

Mr Krummling was taken to hospital for treatment to a 6cm knife wound.

The blade missed his organs and his injuries were not life-threatening.

Police are investigating and believe the attackers were German.

Naumburg, a town of about 33,000 people, is in a region where authorities have warned about the rise of the far right.

The former mayor of Troglitz, 20 miles away, warned: "The seeds of neo-nazism [were] germinating" in 2015 after a refugee housing block was torched by arsonists.

Police in Chemnitz, in the neighbouring state of Saxony, this week detained six people suspected of forming of a far-right militant organisation which planned terrorist attacks on politicians and civil servants.