Israeli arsonists condemned for attack on migrant home

Israeli arsonists have set fire to an apartment housing Eritrean migrants, spray-painting “get out of the neighbourhood” over the entrance in the latest violence against Africans.

Fleeing poverty, fighting and authoritarian rule, some 60,000 Africans have crossed illegally into Israel through the relatively porous desert border with Egypt in recent years.

The influx has jarred the Jewish state, with its already ethnically fraught population of 7.8 million.

Some Israelis warn of a gathering demographic and economic crisis while others say a country born after the Holocaust has a special responsibility to offer foreigners sanctuary.

Israel’s foreign ministry issued a statement yesterday condemning the arson attack, saying “there is no justification for such a heinous crime that endangers people’s lives”.