Hungarian police have detained four men on suspicion of carrying out attacks in which at least six Roma were killed. The violence has underscored growing ethnic tension in the European Union nation, the Voice of America reported.
 
Hungarian police say the men, aged 28 to 42, were captured on August 21 2009 in the eastern city of Debrecen on suspicion of involvement in deadly attacks against Roma.
 
National police chief Jozsef Bencze has told reporters that evidence seized during house searches and at various crime scenes linked the suspects to acts of deadly violence within the past year. 
 
He said that police had appropriate evidence to link the men to the killings. Bencze said that racism appears to have been the main motive.
 
He described the attacks, as the "biggest, most complicated and most serious series of murders in the history of Hungarian criminology," VOA said.
 
The killings were carried out mainly in small countryside villages predominantly settled by Roma.
 
In February, in what was seen as one of the most brutal attacks on Roma, police said Robert Csorba and his five-year-old son were shot dead when they tried to flee their home that was set on fire.
 
In one of the cases this month, a 45-year-old Roma woman was killed in the eastern village of Kisleta and her 13-year-old daughter was seriously injured when police say gunmen broke into their home at night and shot the victims in their sleep.
 
The Budapest-based European Roma Rights Center, or ERRC, suggests that the attacks to which detained suspects are linked are no isolated incidents.
 
ERRC Programmes Coordinator Tara Bedard told VOA News there have been dozens of attacks against the about 800 000 Roma living in Hungary.
 
"There's been 30 attacks in the past two years. And that we know of, I believe that seven people have died," Bedard said. "I think the most frequent type of attack that has been occurring in the past is people showing up with Molotov cocktails and throwing them into or at the homes of Roma in several towns of the country.
 
Some human rights groups and Roma leaders say the attacks come at a time when right-wing extremists are searching for scapegoats for Hungary's current economic crisis.
 
Far right groups targeting what they call "Gypsy crime" have become increasingly popular in Hungary, adding to international concerns over ethnic tensions in this European Union nation, VOA reported.