Police in eastern Germany routinely ignore racially motivated attacks, according to local politicians. They have also been accused of manipulating statistics to hide the soaring number of incidents involving neo-Nazis.

The chief of police in the state of Saxony-Anhalt was forced to resign yesterday after it emerged that he had instructed officers not to classify incidents as hate crimes unless the perpetrators were caught.

The force headed by Frank Huttemann claimed its region went against Germany’s national trend of rising race crime when it reported that attacks by neo-Nazis had halved in the first six months of the year.

But state interior ministry statistics show the number of hate-crime victims rose by more than a quarter in the first nine months of the year.

The resignation of Mr. Huttemann is the latest blow to the Saxony-Anhalt police, which is already the target of a state parliamentary investigation into its failure to act against neo-Nazi activity.

The committee is examining six cases, including one assault in which police failed to detain the suspects even though they remained at the scene after officers arrived.

Germany has been rocked in recent months by an upsurge in neo-Nazi attacks, with mobs targeting people from ethnic minorities.

Jewish and anti-racist groups claim parts of eastern Germany have become “no-go areas.” Last month, a 17-year-old girl had a swastika carved into her hip by a gang of neo-Nazis after she tried to stop them bullying a 6-year-old foreign girl.

A pregnant Iraqi woman needed hospital treatment last weekend after being punched on a bus in Magdeburg, the state capital of Saxony-Anhalt. In another incident, a group of German men attacked three men and a woman from Niger as a crowd of 30 people looked on.