Police arrested about a month ago 8 Petach Tikvah youths whom they said had attacked dozens of people, mostly foreign workers in the area of the Tel Aviv Central Bus Station – as part of a neo-Nazi group. Police cleared the story for publication Saturday night.

The youths, between 17 and 19 years of age, are to be brought before a judge for an extension of their remand Sunday morning. Many of whose victims have been injured quite seriously, police said, and the youths have admitted their involvement under questioning – although they said they were “dragged into” the neo-Nazi movement by older kids.

The group first came to the attention of police last year, during an ongoing investigation of an incident in a Petach Tikvah synagogue where swastikas and anti-Semitic slogans were spray painted on the walls. The existence of the cell came out during that investigation. All the members of the alleged cell are immigrants from the former Soviet Union.