Moscow - The number of foreigners murdered in xenophobic attacks in Russia since the beginning of the year has risen to 69 this year already, higher than in all of 2007, human rights activists reported Saturday.

"Since January, there have been 152 racist attacks, in which 69 people were killed and at least 170 were injured," the director of the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights, Alexander Brod, was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying.

People from the central Asian republics such as Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan tend to be the main victims of the attacks by skinheads.

Human rights organizations as well as the leadership of the former Soviet republics have long complained that the Russian government has done too little to solve the problem.

Centres of racist violence have been Moscow and St Petersburg as well as the regions of Swerdlovsk and Ulyanovsk on the Volga.

People from the Caucasus region have also be targeted, said Brod. According to estimates, the members of rightwing extremist organizations in Russia number at as many as 70,000.

In a climate of growing xenophobia in Russia, four rightwing extremist organizations in Moscow banded together at the beginning of June to form a Russian nationalist movement that plans to contest elections in the future.

According to human rights organization the Sova Centre, 68 people died in Russia from rightwing violence in 2007, with the number increasing yearly at around 20 per cent. (dpa)