Soldiers were sent to support the police in Alexandra, a poor, predominantly black township in Johannesburg where South African men were photographed fatally stabbing a Mozambican man over the weekend. A couple from Zimbabwe suffered injuries from a shooting in Alexandra on Monday night.
Though the township had otherwise quieted down the past two nights, the government made a show of sending the army there on Tuesday, perhaps stung by growing criticism that its slowness in responding to this wave of violence had helped it spread.
Attacks against immigrants — mostly Africans from neighboring countries who live, and often run small businesses, in impoverished areas of South Africa — began about two weeks ago in the eastern city of Durban.