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Twelve killed in Johannesburg anti-immigrant violence

(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-05-19 10:54

JOHANNESBURG - Twelve people have been killed in a wave of weekend violence against immigrants around Johannesburg, police said Sunday, with gangs of armed youths rampaging through poor areas in South Africa's economic capital.

Policemen try to save a man who was set alight by a mob during clashes believed to be linked to recent anti-foreigner violence in Reiger Park informal settlement east of Johannesburg, May 18, 2008. [Agencies]

President Thabo Mbeki announced that a panel had been set up to look into the xenophobic attacks and the South African Red Cross said it had launched a appeal to help displaced people.

"Since Friday to now there have been 12 murders," provincial police communications director Govindsamy Mariemuthoo told AFP when asked about the troubles, which intensified over the weekend and spread to outlying areas.

Since the beginning of last week, foreigners have been targeted by mobs carrying machetes and guns in several run-down parts of the city despite pleas for calm and widespread condemnation from politicians.

Local Johannesburg police spokeswoman Cheryl Engelbrecht told AFP that overnight violence in the inner city had left six dead, 50 people in hospital and a trail of looted shops and burnt cars.

The bulk of the immigrants who have flooded South Africa in recent years are from neighbouring Zimbabwe, with an estimated three million having fled the economic meltdown and political crisis in their country.

They have been particularly targeted as they are blamed by some locals for crime and unemployment. Some Zimbabweans say they are also accused of being behind rising food prices.

An AFP reporter saw armed police recover the dead body of a victim midafternoon in the notorious Hillbrow area of the inner city on Sunday. They fired dozens of rubber bullets to disperse gangs in the surrounding area.

As well as the panel to look into the violence, Thabo Mbeki urged the police to act firmly against the perpetrators, the domestic news agency SAPA reported.

"We hope that the panel and the police will work together and help us answer who is behind this," he was quoted as saying.

The head of the ruling African National Congress, Jacob Zuma, also condemned the violence.

"We cannot allow South Africa to be famous for xenophobia," Zuma said from Pretoria, SAPA reported. "We cannot be a xenophobic country."

He recalled the role neighbouring countries had played in sheltering ANC members in their fight against the racist apartheid regime in South Africa.

"We should be the last people to have this problem of having a negative attitude towards our brothers and sisters who come from outside," he said.

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