British police has arrested more than ten suspects over a hate crime attack on a 17-year-old Kurdish Iranian asylum-seeker in London.

The teenager was waiting with friends at a bus stop in south London on Friday night when a group of around 20 young people cornered him and asked him in aggressive tones where he was from.

According to the police and news reports, when he replied that he was an asylum seeker, the gang chased him through the streets and finally caught him.

They fled when the police arrived at the scene, leaving the severely beaten teenager unconscious, with a fractured skull and a blood clot in his brain.

“He sustained serious head and facial injuries as a result of this attack, which included repeated blows to the head by a large group of attackers,” police investigator Gary Castle said.

According to the police, the victim’s condition was “serious but stable and is not believed to be life-threatening.”

London Mayor Sadiq Khan made a statement, saying hate crime “has no place in London, Britain or anywhere else.”

British police say there has been an upsurge in racist violence since the Britons voted in June 2016 to leave the EU.

In the week after the referendum – also known as the Brexit vote – the number of reported hate crimes in England, Wales and Northern Ireland jumped 46 percent, to 1,831, compared with the same week a year earlier, the National Police Chiefs’ Council reported.

MH/PA