WASHINGTON, Oct 27: More than 9,500 people in the United States were victims last year of hate crimes targeted because of their skin colour, religious belief, sexual orientation or ethnic origins, the FBI said on Monday.

More than half of the 9,527 victims of hate crimes committed in the United States last year were attacked because of their race, and seven out of 10 of those victims were black Americans, the FBI report said.

Around 18 per cent of racially motivated hate crimes were against white victims.

The race of identified perpetrators of all the 9,006 hate crimes committed last year was almost the mirror opposite of the profiles of the victims: around 63 per cent of the offenders were white and around 21 per cent were black.

The race of 10 per cent of offenders was unknown and other races accounted for the remaining known offenders, the report said.

Attacks motivated by a person’s religion or sexual orientation each accounted for around 16 per cent of hate crimes, while 14 per cent of hate crimes were motivated by the victim’s ethnic origins.

Jews were the most targeted in hate crimes motivated by religion, making up around seven in 10 victims, while male homosexuals were the largest victim-group in attacks on people because of their sexual orientation, comprising just under 60 per cent of victims.

Latinos made up around 60 per cent of the 1,347 victims attacked because of their ethnicity.

MUSLIM VICTIMS: Most of the data was statistically unchanged from the previous year, but Muslims represented about eight per cent of victims attacked because of their religion, a decline from the 12 per cent of victims of religion-motivated hate crimes in 2006.

Just under half the hate crimes committed in 2007 were acts of intimidation (47 per cent). Around 30 per cent were simple assaults and 20 per cent aggravated assaults.

Nine murders were reported as hate crimes, the report said.

The statistics used in the report were submitted by police departments in many but not all of the US states, and represent about 86 per cent of the US population.—AFP