South Africa: No reports of immigrant violence overnight

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Police and soldiers raided a hostel considered a hotspot for anti-immigrant attacks as South Africa continued a crackdown on the violence, police said Wednesday.

Police, accompanied by the South African military, arrested 11 men on Tuesday night in a bid to snuff out any further unrest, said police spokesman Lt. Kay Makhubela.

The residents of the dilapidated block in downtown Johannesburg were believed to have looted foreign-owned shops in recent weeks, Makhubela said. Police met no resistance as they seized stolen goods and bags of marijuana, the spokesman said.

No new incidents of violence targeting foreigners were reported overnight in Johannesburg or in the coastal city of Durban, where the attacks began, police said.

At the University of Witwatersrand, about 2,000 students demonstrated against the violence, according to student organizers. Elsewhere in Johannesburg, hundreds of people held a candlelit vigil on Tuesday evening and called for an end to the violence.

Despite the relative calm, as many as 7,000 immigrants are still living in refugee camps after fleeing their homes, said Kate Ribet, spokeswoman for the aid group Doctors Without Borders. The number of people in these camps fluctuates because many immigrants have opted to leave South Africa, she said.

More than 2,000 Mozambicans have returned home from South Africa, said Mouzinho Saide, Mozambique's deputy health minister.

Hundreds of immigrants have also taken buses back to Malawi and Zimbabwe.

At a border post between South Africa and Zimbabwe, another 400 immigrants were receiving trauma counseling before returning home, Zimbabwe's Consul General, Batiraishe Mukonoweshuro, told The Herald newspaper.