THESSALONIKI – An investigation was ordered by a prosecutor in Thessaloniki, Greece’s second-largest city, into the savage beating of a 15-year-old refugee boy who attends Evosmos Intercultural High School, attacked as he walked to a bus to take him to a state-run camp.

He was said to be Iraqi but not identified and Kathimerini said police will try to determine whether it was a hate or racist crime after the gang kicked him and he was punched with brass knuckles. It wasn’t said how many of them jumped him.

But the incident, coming after escalating violence in the city around high schools seems to be linked to a gang of students belonging to a far right-wing group, the paper said, raising worries of the emergency of the kind of attacks that took place under the disbanded neo-Nazi Golden Dawn, whose leaders and dozens of members were jailed.

Greek officials were said to be anxious that Golden Dawn, which is only a fringe of its former self, is being replaced by even more violent and racist gangs.