A man who has been terrorizing women in the East Village with a series of sexual assaults may have struck again last night, police officials said yesterday.

Police are searching for the attacker who assaulted a 20-year-old woman on a sidewalk at about 2 a.m. just steps away from the bright lights of the 24-hour Veselka Restaurant at the corner of East 9th Street and Second Avenue.

It is the fourth such attack over the past month in the bustling neighborhood known for its nightlife.

“We are still gathering information, but it is part of a pattern,” Commissioner Raymond Kelly said yesterday.

The brazen attack came a few hours after police publicized a sketch of a suspect, a male Hispanic between the ages of 18 and 24 who is wanted in three previous incidents of sexual assault around the East Village.

Along the streets lined with clothing boutiques and bars frequented by college students, residents said the series of attacks had shaken a sense of complacency that has grown as crime has dropped.

“It’s a little taste of the old East Village,” the co-owner of the Little King’s Jewelry Store, Jennifer O’Sullivan, said.

Besides the recent assaults, reports of rape are up slightly this year in the 9th Precinct, which covers the East Village.

In the previous cases, the suspect followed women who were alone into their apartments, police said. Neighbors said the most recent victim is a student at New York University.

The suspect stopped her and fondled her before he fled, police said.

A man who works and lives in the building next door to where the attack occurred, Bernard Dobrzynski, 53, said he heard a muffled scream last night at about 1:30 a.m. He assumed the yell came from revelers leaving a nearby bar, however, and didn’t look to see what was happening.

“It happens all the time, so I just let it go,” he said. “Now I’m sorry that I didn’t look out the window.”