As midnight approached, the sporadic outbreak of xenophobic violence across Alexandra was still spreading, with cops battling to bring it under control.

From London Road in the south to Vasco da Gama Street in the north, mobs clashed with the police and looted homes on Monday night.

Alexandra police station community policing forum chairperson Thomas Sithole told The Star that at least a dozen people were detained on charges ranging from public violence to robbery.

"They (the mob) are trying to throw out the foreigners. They say they (foreigners) are committing crime," he said. "The situation is spreading."

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At the last estimate, more than 1 000 men and women were crammed into Alex police station to take refuge against the swelling violence.

In the end, there wasn't much to it... We went in with two cars and a total of 5 volunteers - with a truckload of blankets, bread rolls, two boxes of jam and bags of clothing. Children of Fire arranges emergency packets whenever a fire leaves people homeless, and we had a limited amount of those, designated for women with children. When we arrived at the central police station, Alex had calmed down, children were going to school and the usual bustle was evident. A lot of families that had been caught up in the violence had already left the station; I think there was a group of some 80 people left when we did the food drop.

I didn't get much of the details what had exactly happened, and only learned later there had been an estimated 1000 in the police station. I had a peek in the hall where the women had slept - must have been very cramped.

Obviously we brought too little to provide for everyone. And we forget to bring a spatula to spoon out the jam on the rolls so we had to improvise and breakfast became a wonderful messy affair. Some people said they hadn't had proper food for 24 hours.

One of the major radio stations in SA got a whiff of us, and sent someone to interview a CoF volunteer - this pulled in more press and allowed some of the people to tell their stories; I'm quite happy about that. Yet what will happen next to them is anyone's guess; police says that anyone who doesn't have an ID will be transported back to their original country... It's harsh.

Best we could do at this point. Let's see where this goes next.