Death toll climbs sharply in South Africa racist attacks (2nd Roundup)

May 18, 2008, 16:57 GMT

Johannesburg - The death toll in a week-long wave of xenophobic violence in South Africa rose sharply over the weekend as reports of people being burnt and beaten to death poured in from squatter camps around the business capital Johannesburg.

At least 10 people had been killed by Sunday as shack dwellers in one poor community after another turned on migrants from neighbouring countries, beating them, sometimes fatally, torching their homes and looting their possessions.

A photographer with the European Pressphoto Agency saw a man being burnt alive after being severely beaten by a mob in a squatter camp in Reiger Park suburb, eastern Johannesburg Sunday.

The man was covered in a mattress and set alight. It was not clear whether he survived. EPA also saw two dead bodies covered in blankets, one in a back yard, the other lying in the open veld.

Police in Reiger Park fired live rounds of ammunition to subdue angry residents and came under live fire as residents swept through the settlement, razing homes belonging to mainly Shangaan-speaking Mozambican migrants.

The two dead bring to at least 10 the number killed in the wave of anti-foreigner violence that has swept like wildfire through the informal settlements that ring Johannesburg since May 11.

Earlier, police reported two people were burnt and three people beaten to death Sunday morning in a squatter camp in Cleveland, also east of the city.

Zimbabweans were the main target of that attack, in which a further 50 people sustained injuries, including gunshots and stab wounds, police spokeswoman Cheryl Engelbrecht said. On Saturday, a man was shot dead and two injured in Tembisa township, also in the east, police said.

The attacks began a week ago in the township of Alexandra, north-east of Johannesburg, where residents went on the rampage, accusing foreign migrants of taking jobs and public housing, as well as being responsible for high crime levels.

Two people were killed and 60 injured in that flare-up, which forced around 1,000 people from their homes into the nearby police stations.

Hundreds more have since been displaced with little more than the clothes on their back, leading the medical aid agency Doctors without Borders to express fears of a humanitarian crisis.

On Sunday the violence encroached on central Johannesburg, where a church harbouring hundreds of illegal Zimbabweans was the scene of a tense standoff between the migrants and baseball-bat wielding youths.

Police fired rubber bullets to chase away the youths from the Central Methodist Church, where two people were injured, one in an axe attack.

Inside the church the migrants had stockpiled bricks and sticks to defend themselves in case of a large-scale onslaught.

'I'm very worried. I'm sure they'll come back,' Wayne, a 23-year-old Zimbabwean who jumped the border to South Africa four months ago to look for work, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

The ruling African National Congress, opposition parties and the main trade union federation COSATU have all condemned the xenophobic upsurge, which has claimed the lives of several foreigners in recent years but reached new proportions this week.

South Africa is a magnet for poor migrants from Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi and other neighbouring countries, most of whom live in the country illegally and compete with South Africans for low-paid jobs.

Up to 3 million Zimbabweans are believed to have fled their country's economic and political chaos to South Africa in recent years, putting significant strain on resources in disadvantaged areas.

The government has established a task team to probe the violence.