By Maggie Mulvihill

Winthrop, September 22, 2005 - Attorney General Tom Reilly's office is probing allegations that a Somali family was the target of vicious racist attacks by Winthrop High School students.

And yesterday, the family of Mohamed Mohamed, 16, lodged two additional complaints of harassment at their home with Winthrop police, said a law enforcement source with knowledge of the probe.

The attorney general's Civil Rights Division became involved after a Herald report last week detailing the family's allegations of beatings and rock-throwing by high school students targeting them, officials said.

Mohamed and his six siblings, who fled for Boston with their parents from war-torn Somalia, moved to Winthrop last year because they feared the violence in Roxbury, Mohamed said.

At least one juvenile has been arrested in connection with the alleged attacks and police are regularly patroling the area around the family's Winthrop home.

The attacks began at an outdoor basketball court shortly after the family moved to Winthrop in August.

Mohamed said in early September, six white teens beat up his brother and cousin in front of the family home and also threw a large rock at his mother, Fatuma Abu, 42, as she stood on a second-floor porch.

Abu, who doesn't speak English, is limping as a result, he said.

Mohamed and his siblings said they were anxious about starting classes at Winthrop High School because of threats made by some of the teenagers. ``They told us to go back where we came from,'' Mohamed told the Herald last week. ``They all had sticks and stones.''

Neither Winthrop Police Chief David Goldstein nor Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel Conley could be reached for comment on whether any further criminal charges are planned in connection with the case.