A Belarusian tourist has been arrested after violently attacking an Afghan boy at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport.

The child had arrived in Russia after he and his mother fled the attacks on Iran. Yazdan, aged 18 months, is now fighting for his life with serious skull fractures and spinal injuries, British newspaper Daily Mirror reported.

31-year-old construction worker Vladimir Vitkov was arrested and confessed to “trying to murder” the child.

CCTV footage showed Vitkov picking up the boy before “hurling him to the ground of Moscow airport’s arrivals hall”.

The Moscow region children’s ombudswoman Ksenia Mishonova labelled him a “drug-addled monster”, and called for him to be punished with “hard labour until he is feeble with old age”.

The Mirror reported that Vitkov had been fired from a nuclear power plant construction job in Egypt after failing a spot check for drugs and alcohol and was returning home via Moscow, citing a friend of the suspect’s.

The Iranian Ambassador to Russia, Kazem Jalali, condemned the incident as “completely inhuman”, according to Iran’s Tasnim news agency.

“It was initially reported the child was Iranian. Russian Foreign Ministry colleagues told us that the file is officially listed under Afghanistan. The innocent child, currently in a coma, is apparently from an Afghan family,” Jalali said.