Vandals have hung a pig's head from the door of a Muslim prayer room in eastern France and daubed the building top to bottom with swastikas.

A passer-by alerted the police earlier on Wednesday after discovering the pig's head suspended from the door and trotters from the shutters of the prayer center, part of a North African community center on the outskirts of the town of Toul.

France, home to Europe's largest Muslim community, estimated at five million, has seen a rise in Islamophobic attacks in the past two years, with neo-Nazi desecration of Muslim war graves and arson strikes on several mosques.

Police arrested two young men in their twenties shortly after the incident, said local MP Nadine Morano, who is also the junior minister for families in President Nicolas Sarkozy's right-wing government.

According to a police source, the youths were caught spraying swastikas onto the wall of a kebab restaurant in a nearby town.