Police in County Antrim say they are concerned by a spate of race attacks in the past week.

In one incident in Ballymena, two Filipino nurses had their windows smashed.

They were also subjected to racist abuse.

PSNI Sergeant Michael Graham said racially motivated crimes were under-reported.

He also urged people to give police information regarding such attacks.

Dramatic increase

"Racial incidents are totally unacceptable and we need to know about them," he said.

"We encourage people to report all such incidents to us so that we can identify locations, we can monitor the incidents and indeed devise action plans to deal with those incidents."

There has been a dramatic increase in racist attacks in Northern Ireland in recent years.

Last year, a report said there were more than 350 racial incidents reported to the police between 1996 and 1999 - a 400% increase.

The number of racist attacks on children doubled - rising from 8.5% of total attacks in 1996 to more than 16% in 1999.

The annual total increased from 186 to 269 incidents between 1999 and 2000 - a rise of 45%.