Five people were killed in xenophobic attacks in South Africa, police said, as President Cyril Ramaphosa vowed to clamp down on what he described as “acts of wanton violence” and the African Union and Nigeria sounded the alarm.

Police fired rubber bullets and arrested 189 people in the township of Alexandra on Tuesday, a day after clashing with looters who local media said targeted foreign-owned businesses in several parts of the city.

Most of the deceased were South African, police said.

“I’m convening the ministers in the security cluster today to make sure that we keep a close eye on these acts of wanton violence and find ways of stopping them,” he said in a post on Twitter.

“There can be no justification for any South African to attack people from other countries.”

Rocks, bricks and rubber bullets strewed the empty streets of Alexandra on Tuesday, and Al Jazeera reporters at the scene saw police firing rubber bullets at a crowd of 50 people who were hurling rocks.

About two dozen shops, owned by both foreigners and locals, were vandalised or looted.

“They burnt everything,” Bangladeshi shopowner Kamrul Hasan told AFP news agency in Alexandra, adding that his shop gets attacked every three to six months.

“All my money is gone. If the [South African] government pays for my plane ticket, I will go back to Bangladesh,” the 27-year-old said.

Lungelo Dlamini, a spokesman for police, said the motive behind Tuesday’s riots was not clear.

“They are just criminals who are looting and taking advantage of the situation,” he told Al Jazeera.

Police arrested more than 91 people on Monday after protesters torched cars and looted dozens of shops.

News24, a South African news agency, said Monday’s riots came after hundreds of people marched in Johannesburg’s Central Business District (CBD) demanding foreigners leave. They targeted “shops they believed to be owned by foreign nationals”, it reported.

•Excerpted from an Al Jazeera report. Photo shows Looters take items from an alleged foreign-owned shop during a riot in the Johannesburg suburb of Turffontein on September 2, 2019 [Michele Spatari / AFP]

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