The services at eight public squares and other areas in greater Athens occurred peacefully but police cleared one square where Greek local residents and members of the far-right Chrysi Avgi — a group widely linked to a growing number violent attacks against immigrants. Police later briefly clashed with several dozen of its members.

Protesters played loud music from a nearby apartment, threw eggs, and jeered at the immigrants throughout the hourlong service in the city’s Attiki Square.

The incident occurred as tension grows in over illegal immigration in Greece, the busiest transit point for human trafficking in the European Union.

The leader of Chrysi Avgi, Nikos Michaloliakos, was elected to Athens’ city council in local government elections that ended last weekend, after receiving an unprecedented 5.3 percent of the vote.

Michaloliakos campaigned on anti-immigrant issues and against a long-delayed government plan to build a state-funded mosque in the Greek capital.

“This is a protest against the effort to turn Athens’ public squares into an area of outdoor prayer for Muslims,” Michaloliakos told supporters who gathered at Attiki Square late Monday.

“Greece is being turned into Saudi Arabia — it’s a disgrace,” he said. “Immigrants are often chased away from their country because of war or hunger. But that’s not our fault. We can’t become the poorhouse of the world.”

On Tuesday, a group representing Muslim immigrants described the incident at Attiki Square as minor and thanked Greek authorities for sanctioning and policing the outdoor services, also held opposite Athens City Hall and outside the main building of Athens University.

“We don’t want to let anyone blacken the image of this country,” Naim Elghandour, head of the recently created Muslim Association of Greece, told private Skai television.

“We want to peacefully coexist with everyone else,” he said. “The prayers held today is not to exert pressure to build a mosque in Athens. That is a question of civilization, because Athens is the only capital city in the European Union without a mosque.”