Police investigating possible hate crime at North Dakota restaurant

(Reuters) - A Somali restaurant in northeast North Dakota, which was hit with graffiti last week telling the owner to "go home," caught fire on Tuesday, prompting authorities to investigate the incidents as possible hate crimes.

Firefighters spent 20 minutes putting out the blaze at Juba Coffee and Restaurant in Grand Forks, North Dakota, on Tuesday morning, Grand Forks Fire Department Battalion Chief Mike Sandry said.

The fire came five days after graffiti was found painted in black on the restaurant's front window, said police department spokesman Derik Zimmel.

The graffiti appeared to be a Nazi symbol and the words "go home," according to a photograph published on the Grand Forks Herald website. Zimmel said investigators were not convinced it was a Nazi symbol.

"Are we considering it potentially as an act of hate or a hate crime? I think that is a possibility," he said. "But it's also a possibility that it's not."

Investigators have yet to determine whether the fire was arson and if the two incidents are connected, Zimmel said.

The state religion of Somalia is Islam. The Council on American-Islamic Relations said it had received more reports of discrimination, intimidation, threats and violence targeting Muslim-Americans in the 10 days after the Nov. 13 Paris shootings than during any other period since the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States in 2001.

“2015 might be the worst year we’ve seen in collecting reports about Islamophobic acts of discrimination and violence against individuals and houses of worship,” Robert McCaw, government affairs manager for CAIR, told Reuters.

(Reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee and Marina Lopes in Washington; Editing by Bernard Orr and Peter Cooney)