Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Footage shows the attack in the Prenzlauer Berg area of Berlin

German police are investigating an assault on two young men in Berlin, in which the attacker was filmed shouting anti-Semitic abuse. Merkel called the attack in the city's trendy Prenzlauer Berg neighbourhood "a very horrible incident" and vowed the government would respond "with full force and resolve" against growing anti-Semitism in Germany. German Foreign Heiko Maas tweeted that “it is intolerable if young men are being attacked here just because they wear a kippa.”

“Jews shall never again feel threatened here. In a surprising twist, however, the victim of the attack, who identified himself on Israeli television as Adam Armoush, later told German TV that he wasn't Jewish, but an Israeli from an Arab family. “They started to get angry and one of them ran to me and I knew it was important to film it because there would be no way to catch him by the time police arrived.”

Police said they are still looking for the attackers. During the attack, the assailant lashed the kippah-clad Jewish man with his belt and repeated the Arabic word for Jew, “Yahudi.”

According to news reports, the victim was accompanied by a friend, 24, who also was wearing a kippah. The head of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany, Aiman Mazyek, demanded punishment for the perpetrators, tweeting that “it makes me angry to see such violence full of hatred.”

Police said after the belt attack, the suspect’s two companions took him away. “Anti-Semitism doesn’t belong to the Berlin we want to live in.”

Anti-Semitic incidents have been on the rise in Germany.
Two Israeli men wearing kippahs are attacked in Berlin, Germany.