Suffolk police dealt with two incidents of hate crimes linked to mosques in the county between March and July this year according to figures obtained through a Freedom of Information request.

Hate crimes targeting mosques and other Muslim places of worship across the UK more than doubled between 2016 and 2017, an investigation has found.

Police forces recorded 110 hate crimes directed at mosques between March and July this year, up from just 47 over the same period in 2016.

Racist abuse and threats to “bomb the mosque” feature heavily among the hate crimes, as do incidents of offenders smashing windows on buildings and parked cars.

In Suffolk there were no hate crimes recorded linked to mosques during the same period in 2016.

The county’s figures mirror those in Essex and Cambridgeshire – in both counties there were three reports of hate crimes linked to mosques in the four-month period this year but none during the same period last year.

However in Norfolk there were no hate crimes reported by mosques this year compared with one in 2016.

Shadow home secretary Diane Abbott said: “Attacks on any religious group or minority are abominable. These anti-Muslim attacks will be condemned by all decent people.”

The data was obtained by the Press Association through Freedom of Information requests to UK police forces. The figures, based on 42 responses from 45 forces, also show that 25 forces saw a year-on-year increase in hate crimes directed at mosques, with the biggest rise reported by Greater Manchester Police (nine crimes, up from zero) and London’s Metropolitan Police (17 crimes, up from eight).

A Home Office spokesman said: “All forms of hate crime are completely unacceptable and the UK has some of the strongest laws in the world to tackle it.”

Fiyaz Mughal, founder of Tell MAMA, an organisation which documents hate crimes against Muslims in the UK, said the increase in hate crimes and attacks on mosques were part of a rising tide of online hate which has spilled out on to the streets.

He said: “Political events have supercharged the sense of confidence in sections of our population which probably held those (extremist) views and didn’t voice them before, but felt confident in voicing them over the last few years.”