JOHANNESBURG- South African police guarded foreign-owned shops in an impoverished Johannesburg township on Monday after a mob attacked stores over the weekend amid simmering anger at immigrants, officials and media said.
On Sunday police dispersed more than 100 people who went on a rampage after a Somali shop owner allegedly shot dead two people in the Diepsloot township north of Johannesburg, according to police spokesman Lungelo Dlamini.
“Two people… were shot dead by a shop owner who alleged that they were trying to rob him,” Dlamini told AFP, adding that the victims were from Zimbabwe.
“Allegedly some shops were attacked,” he said. “Police intervened and the crowd was dispersed.”
He denied radio reports that police fired rubber bullets to break up the crowd.
Police were guarding foreign-owned shops in Diepsloot on Monday, Eyewitness News radio reported.
Last week mobs looted foreign-owned stores in townships southwest of Johannesburg.
Amid widespread poverty and unemployment, frustration in Johannesburg’s run-down neighbourhoods often boils over into anti-immigrant violence.
The recent incidents have raised fears of a repeat of xenophobic attacks that killed some 62 people in 2008.
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