JERUSALEM (AFP) - Vandals left anti-Muslim graffiti on a mosque in northern Israel, police said on Tuesday, the latest in a string of racist and religious attacks in the region.

"Unidentified people drew a Star of David and wrote 'close the mosques and open yeshivas' (Jewish seminaries) on the outer wall" of the mosque in Fureidis, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP.

"The tyres of several cars parked nearby were slashed," he said, adding that "crimes committed for nationalist motives are extremely serious".

On April 18, assailants in the nearby city of Umm al-Faham left graffiti on a mosque and damaged its door.

Earlier in the month, suspected Jewish extremists slashed the tyres of some 40 cars in an Arab village in northern Israel, and a Roman Catholic convent west of Jerusalem was vandalised by attackers who sprayed offensive graffiti on the walls and damaged five nearby cars.

In March, vandals slashed the tyres of more than 40 cars in Arab east Jerusalem, spraying a slogan reading: "Gentiles in the land are enemies."