Asylum seekers and Scots living close to where an Algerian woman and her baby were sexually assaulted last night reacted with shock and anger.

The community in Scotstoun, Glasgow, has been praised for its efforts to integrate asylum seekers into the local life. It has also been at the forefront of a high-profile campaign to prevent the forcible removal of failed asylum seekers - vigils and demonstrations in support of people threatened with "dawn raids" are common.

However, reports of racial abuse are not infrequent.

Pishko Omar, 26, an Iraqi Kurd who has been in Glasgow for six years, said he feels isolated and threatened in Scotstoun. Dressed in jeans and a casual shirt, he looks like any young Scot, but he says his Middle Eastern appearance singles him out.

A few years ago, someone hit his head with a bottle and called him a "black bastard".

"I called the police who came to see me. But they never found this guy who hit me. Now when I walk by someone, I don't feel safe," he said.

Kapila Desilva, a Sri Lankan asylum seeker who has lived in Kingsway Court, Scotstoun, for four years, says people have grown used to asylum seekers and no longer see them as alien or a threat.

However, he then qualifies this. Walk down the road into Yoker and that sense of safety lessens. People are no longer used to black faces and some are more likely to hurl abuse.

Mr Desilva remembers a young Turkish man being stabbed on the same cycle path as last week's assault. "People use it as a shortcut to go to Lidl. I used to go down it myself but I wouldn't walk down there now," he said. "The threat is from the teenagers. It's local boys just hanging around.

"These people are jobless, they don't have anything to do. If you speak to educated Scottish people, they always say there is nothing wrong with asylum seekers being here. But people with no jobs, no education, they see asylum seekers and try to bully them."

Catherine Morrison, 23, a part-time worker in a tanning studio on nearby Dumbarton Road, is shocked when told of last week's attack. "This is the first I've heard of anything like that. It's absolutely disgusting."

She has stayed in Yoker all her life and feels it is safe. But she added: "Maybe that's because I've always lived here and know all the faces."

At a pub across the road, Clarke Atkinson, 34, says he is shocked and disgusted by the attack on the Algerian woman, but not surprised. The area, he says, is teeming with "neds and junkies".

He has worked as a shipbuilder at the nearby yards at Govan and Yoker for more than 20 years and says it has always been a rough area - the asylum seekers are merely its latest victims.

"Personally I don't have much interaction with them, they pretty much keep themselves to themselves but I have nothing against them," he says of Scotstoun's recent migrants.

He points to the street round the corner next to where last week's assault took place. "They changed the name of the street there to try and get rid of the stigma. But you have to do more than change the street names. You have to change the people."