Foreign football fans are advised not to go to some parts of Germany during the upcoming World Cup for security concerns, and especially in fear of racial attacks, local media reported Wednesday.

"There are small and medium towns in Brandenburg and elsewhere where I would not advise anyone with a different skin color to go, " said Uwe-Karsten Heye, former spokesman for the government under former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

In an interview with German radio, Heye, who chairs an organization dedicated to promoting tolerance in Germany, said "there is a chance they might not get out alive."

Brandenburg, a German federal state which surrounds Berlin, has the highest rate of violent neo-Nazi crime in the country, according to a report issued in 2004 by the domestic security agency, the Verfassungsschutz.

On Monday, a court in Brandenburg town of Senftenburg sentenced a German neo-Nazi to 13 months in prison. The man goose-stepped up to a group of Polish tourists and began punching and kicking them. Three of them suffered head injuries.

In another case, an Ethiopia-born German citizen was savagely beaten at night in the Brandenburg of Potsdam last month.

Hundreds of thousands of foreign visitors are expected during the World Cup to be held in 12 German cities from June 9.

Source: Xinhua