Seven migrants have been arrested after a homeless man was set on fire on Christmas Eve at a Berlin subway station.

The men, aged 15 to 21, are suspected of torching the victim as he slept on a platform bench at Schönleinstraße station.

Six of the suspects are Syrian and one is Lybian and an attempted murder investigation has been launched.

Schönleinstraße station, where the homeless man was set on fire as he slept on a platform bench

Thomas Neuendorf, the vice chief of the press office at Berlin Police, told Bild that detectives believe the 21-year-old to have been the main perpetrator.

He, along with his alleged accomplices, were arrested on yesterday.

After torching the homeless man, the suspected assailants hopped onto a train to make their getaway.

CCTV footage captured them watching and laughing as the man was burning on the platform.

It appeared they were celebrating, according to local press.

Remarkably, the victim escaped almost unscathed, thanks to the rapid intervention of several witnesses.

The man believed to be Stoykov, dressed in jeans and a leather jacket, aims a targeted kick at her back, toppling her down the stairs

The attacker's three companions glance at the woman lying on the floor before leaving. One of them even leans down to pick up a beer bottle and then walks off

Svetoslav Stoykov (pictured), was identified as the prime suspect for the attack. He fled to France but was arrested on his arrival back in Berlin

The incident happened metres away from the spot a woman was kicked down the stairs of another subway station in the city.

A Bulgarian man is suspected of attacking the woman at Hermannstraße station - the next stop along from where the homeless man was set alight.

The attack, in October, was captured on video and when it went viral earlier this month the prime suspect, Svetoslav Stoykov, 27, fled to France, where he hid with relatives in Nice.

CCTV footage of the shocking attack, which showed a man kicking an unsuspecting woman down the stairs at an underground station while he casually smoked a cigarette while holding a bottle of beer, went around the world.

After the video went viral, a €2,000 (£1,677) reward was offered by bodyguard Michael Kuehr, 54, who worked for Lady Gaga and Charlize Theron.

Under German criminal law, Stoykov could face anywhere from six months to 10 years in prison if convicted of having inflicted grievous bodily injury.

Although the motive for the most recent attack is not clear, Germany has been rocked by terror this year, heaping pressure on chancellor Angela Merkel's open-door immigration policy.

A bloody week of violence that rocked Germany began on July 18 when Pakistani teenager Riaz Khan Ahmadzai, 17, posing as an Afghan refugee, hacked at passengers on a train in Wurzburg with an axe, wounding five.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel appears to have a lot on her mind as she awaits the arrival of EU Council President Donald Tusk outside the Federal chancellery for talks in the wake of the Brexit vote, in Berlin, Germany

He was shot dead by police.

Four days later mentally unstable German-Iranian teenager Ali Sonboly shot nine people dead during a rampage through a shopping centre in Munich before taking his own life.

Sonboly claimed he was taking revenge for being bullied at school with no political motive to the murderous rampage.

Earlier that month, a suspected ISIS airport bomb plotter hanged himself in a German prison after being arrested following a manhunt.

Syrian national Jaber al-Bakr, 22, was found hanged in his cell in Leipzig, eastern Germany on Wednesday evening - having reportedly used his own t-shirt - and was taken away overnight.

He was detained on Sunday after three days on the run following a tip-off that he may have been looking to team up with associates in Leipzig.

Al-Bakr had built 'a virtual bomb-making lab' in a flat in Chemnitz and was thought to have planned an attack against either one of Berlin's two airports or a transport hub in his home state of Saxony, security sources said.

Chemnitz was on lockdown for hours when police raided his flat but failed to seize him before he was captured by fellow Syrian nationals who tied him up and handed him over to the authorities.

And on Monday, December 19, Tunisian ISIS fanatic Anis Amri hijacked a 35-tonne truck and ploughed it into a Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12 people.