'The tension is there for war'

Cape Town - Immigrant leaders in South Africa said on Monday that thousands of foreigners frustrated at miserable living conditions were on the point of retaliating against a wave of xenophobic attacks.

Tens of thousands of immigrants have been forced to take refuge at temporary shelters around the country after mobs began attacking migrants three weeks ago, killing at least 62 people.

"The tension is there, already, for a war," Deo Kabemba Bin Ngulu, a leader from the Democratic Republic of Congo, told reporters.

Human rights groups have condemned the conditions in the tented shelter camps set up to house the displaced, with freezing temperatures at night and the threat of disease.

"They are terrorised, they are traumatised ... and some of them (can) resort to violence because they think, now, everywhere is violence," said Somali businessman Hoosein Omar.

'We are African...'

The large Somali community in Cape Town has been a particular focus of anger from poorer residents of the city, who accuse the migrants of stealing their jobs.

Hundreds of mostly Somali traders marched to Parliament on Monday to protest against the anti-immigrant attacks.

"We are African. We are from this soil. I am not a foreigner ... and this soil is Africa," Abdul Kadir Karakoos, a Somali leader in Cape Town, told reporters.

He said 600 Somalis had been killed in anti-immigrant violence in South Africa since 2002.

More than 50 000 Mozambicans and Zimbabweans have returned home because of the unrest, which has now subsided.

The violence started in Johannesburg's Alexandra township on May 11 before spreading to other cities, with mobs wielding machetes and axes driving migrants from their homes.

Facilities inadequate

The international medical humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders, said facilities for the displaced were inadequate.

"After living in unacceptable conditions for up to three weeks, the people displaced are now being relocated by the South African government, without proper access to information about their rights and options, to sites that are unprepared and insecure," the group said in a statement.

"They say they are being treated like animals."

The government, widely criticised for its initial slow response, said more than 1 300 people had been arrested in connection with the violence, which it says is being driven by criminal elements.

- Reuters