Ariel Schalit / AP

Israelis chant slogans against African migrants during a protest in Tel Aviv on May 23, 2012. Recent rapes blamed on African migrants have ignited a political and emotional backlash against their ballooning numbers, with Israelis and their leaders stridently and in an alarming new development, violently calling for their expulsion.

Reuters reports — Surging street violence against African migrants in Israel, including a rampage that an Israeli broadcaster dubbed a "pogrom", drew statements of empathy for the rioters as well as censure from the government on Thursday.

Menahem Kahana / AFP - Getty Images

African migrants sleep at a children's playground in Levinsky Park in southern Tel Aviv on May 25, 2012.

Waving Israeli flags and chanting "Deport the Sudanese", residents of a low-income Tel Aviv neighborhood where many of the border-jumpers from Eritrea, Sudan and South Sudan live held a march late Wednesday that turned violent.

Israel okays funding to block African migrants

Police said 20 people were arrested for assault and vandalism. Trash cans were set alight, storefront windows were broken and a crowd attacked an African driving through the area, breaking his car's windows. No serious injuries were reported.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned Wednesday's violence, saying there was no room for such action and that the issue must be resolved "responsibly".

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Dan Balilty / AP

Israelis gather during a demonstration in support of African migrants on May 24, 2012.

Menahem Kahana / AFP - Getty Images

An African migrant fixes his TV satellite dish in southern Tel Aviv, where thousands of African migrants reside, on May 24, 2012.

Menahem Kahana / AFP - Getty Images

Women pass by an African migrant resting at Levinsky Park in southern Tel Aviv on May 24, 2012.

Henry Romero / Reuters

Migrants from Central America wait for a freight train after taking part in a protest in Lecheria, in Tultitlan, Mexico on May 17, 2012.

A group of migrants from Central America took part in a protest Thursday to demand that the Mexican government stop kidnappings, robberies and crimes committed by organised criminal groups against migrants.

Child actors shame Mexico's politicians with mockumentary

More than 200 illegal immigrants have been killed in Mexico in the last 10 months, according to the Casa del Migrante in Saltillo, northern Mexico, which coordinates several shelters for the homeless run by the Catholic Church.

Mexico's drug war: No sign of 'light at the end of the tunnel'

Some 140,000 Central Americans, according to government figures, enter Mexico illegally each year in the hope of reaching the northern border to cross into the United States. 

-- Reuters and Agence France Presse contributed to this report

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Yuri Cortez / AFP - Getty Images

A Central American immigrant waits for a chance to board a train in Tultitlan on May 17, 2012.

Yuri Cortez / AFP - Getty Images

Honduran Reina Jackeline, who is six months pregnat, rests near a passing train in Tultitlan on May 17, 2012.

Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah / Reuters

South Sudanese families arrive with their belongings at a train station in Khartoum on March 1 to be transported home to South Sudan.

Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah / Reuters

A family waits for water before being transported home to South Sudan, in Khartoum on March 1.

Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah / Reuters

A South Sudanese newborn waits inside a train in Khartoum on March 1.

Ashraf Shazly / AFP - Getty Images

A South Sudanese man carries his belongings before returning home aboard a train organised by the International Organization for Migration in Khartoum on March 1.

South Sudanese nationals arrive at train stations in Khartoum to return home to South Sudan with the help from the International Organization for Migration. Southerners have until April 8 to either return home or normalize their status with Khartoum authorities.

South Sudan was created last year after southern Sudanese voted to secede from Sudan in a referendum required by a 2005 peace agreement that ended the country's long-running civil war.

Up to 700,000 ethnic Southerners are estimated to still be in Sudan and the United Nations and the Sudanese government have been organizing transportation of South Sudanese nationals to return home.

--Msnbc.com wire services contributed to this post.

Related links:

• Clinton: Bashir trying to scuttle Sudan peace deal
• South Sudan says Sudan bombed 2 oil wells in South

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Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah / Reuters

South Sudanese children wait at a train station in Khartoum on March 1.

Andrey Smirnov / AFP - Getty Images

A detained illegal immigrant from Uzbekistan, looks from his cell through a dirty glass window with a grate at police station in Kazansky (Kazan) railway station in Moscow on Jan. 24, 2012. Police detained about 30 migrants during a routine check at a railway station in Moscow on Tuesday. In a far-ranging article published earlier on his campaign website, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said that he planned to toughen up immigration legislation.

Reuters reports from MOSCOW:

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has warned ethnic tensions could tear Russia apart, saying he would toughen migration rules on reassuming the presidency and keep a tight rein on Russia's regions to prevent it following the Soviet Union into oblivion.

Putin, in power since 2000 and favored to win a six-year presidential term in March, described a Soviet-style vision of a country in which the rights of ethnic minorities would be respected but Russian language and culture would dominate. Continue reading.

Andrey Smirnov / AFP - Getty Images

A police officer, right, locks up a detained illegal immigrant from Uzbekistan in a cell at Kazansky railway station on Jan. 24, 2012.

Juni Kriswanto / AFP - Getty Images

A police officer carries a young survivor to an immigration office in Watulimo, Indonesia, on Dec. 18, 2011. More than 200 people were feared dead after a heavily overloaded boat packed mostly with Afghan and Iranian asylum-seekers sank off Indonesia en route to Australia.

Reuters reports:

The crew and captain of an Indonesian boat packed with illegal immigrants grabbed life vests and swam away as it sank during a heavy storm, leaving more than 200 passengers missing, Australian media reported on Monday.

Surviving asylum seekers said terrified passengers on the boat that was heading for Australia were left to drown as it broke apart in stormy seas about 55 miles off the coast of Java, Indonesia.

"The captain and six crew took the life vests and started swimming away," Pakistani Saed Mohammad Zia, 18, told the Daily Telegraph.

Juni Kriswanto / AFP - Getty Images

Members of a search and rescue team continue to look for victims of the sinking in Watulimo on Dec. 19, 2011.

"They were all from Indonesia. We lost sight of them in the big waves and we never saw them again. We don't know if they were rescued."

The number of survivors, missing and those feared dead is still not clear, authorities said of the latest of such disasters in recent years for immigrants travelling via Indonesia in search of a better life in Australia.

Many of the passengers on the wooden vessel, which sank on Saturday, are believed to be economic migrants from countries including Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Those that survived suffered severe dehydration and exhaustion after struggling to stay afloat in the rough seas, some clinging to wreckage for five hours.

"We were just praying to God that someone would help us. We thought it was the last of our life story," said Esmat Adine, 24, from Afghanistan.

"People were dying in front of us. The bodies were lying in front of us in the water, women and children mostly," he told the Daily Telegraph. Read the full story.

Ulet Ifansasti / Getty Images

An asylum seeker who survived crys during an interviewe in Blitar, East Java, on Dec. 19, 2011.

Ulet Ifansasti / Getty Images

A survivor receiving treatment on Dec. 19, 2011 in Blitar, East Java. The tragedy is expected to further inflame the debate in Australia as how best to handle the influx of asylum seekers.

TUXTLA GUTIERREZ, Mexico — Police in Mexico's southern Chiapas state found 513 migrants on Tuesday inside two trailer trucks bound for the United States, and said they had been transported in dangerously crowded conditions.

Government of Chiapas via EPA

A handout photograph provided by the Government of Chiapas shows an X-ray view of the inside of a truck where some of a group of 513 illegal immigrants were found in Tuxtla Gutierrez, northern Mexico, on May 17. Authorities detected two trucks with immigrants from at least nine countries when the vehicles crossed a checkpoint equipped with an X-ray.

Chiapas state police discovered the migrants while using X-ray equipment on the trucks at a checkpoint on the outskirts of the city of Tuxtla Gutierrez.

PGJECH via EPA

A group of illegal immigrants are found inside a truck in Tuxtla Gutierrez, northern Mexico, on May 17.

Some of the immigrants were suffering from dehydration after traveling for hours clinging to cargo ropes strung inside the containers to keep them upright as the trucks bounced along from the Guatemalan border, and allow more migrants to be more crammed in on the floor. Read the full story.

SYDNEY — Asylum seekers and other detainees at an Australian immigration center set fire to several buildings, climbed onto rooftops and hurled tiles at officials who were scrambling on Thursday to bring the chaotic protest to an end.

Rick Rycroft / AP

Fellow detainees grab onto a man, second left, and remove a wire he had around his neck that is tied to a vent, after he threatened to jump from a rooftop at the Villawood Detention Center in Sydney, Australia on April 21.

Brami Jegan / EPA

Burning buildings at the Villawood Detention Centre, set alight during a protest by up to 100 immigration detainees in the early hours of the morning. The riot began on 20 April, when asylum seekers took to a building's roof reportedly in protest to the department denying their visa applications.

Tim Wimborne / Reuters

Detainees hold a protest sign atop a building at Villawood detention centre on April 21. Angry asylum-seekers torched an immigration detention centre in Sydney on Thursday, burning part of it to the ground after Australian authorities denied some of their requests for refuge, local media reported.

Up to 100 people being held at Sydney's Villawood Detention Center were involved in the riots, which began Wednesday night when two detainees climbed onto a roof, immigration officials said.

Protesters set an oxygen cylinder alight, which led to an explosion, and nine buildings — including a medical center and dining hall — were gutted by fire. Firefighters brought the blaze under control early Thursday and no one was injured. Continue reading.

Ettore Ferrari / EPA

Red Cross workers carry a migrant on a stretcher after he arrived on the Italian island of Lampedusa early on April 6. Scores of migrants were feared dead after a boat thought to be carrying about 200 people from North Africa capsized off the island, officials said. Only 48 people were rescued so far, Italian coast guard officer Pietro Carosia said. The 48 survivors, who were picked up by a coast guard patrol some 39 nautical miles from Lampedusa, had arrived on the island by mid-morning.

Ettore Ferrari / EPA

Migrants disembark a boat after arriving at the harbor of the Italian island of Lampedusa on April 6.

ROME — Italian coast guard officials were trying Wednesday to rescue migrants lost at sea after their boat capsized off the coast of Lampedusa, a tiny Italian island close to North Africa, officials said. Many were feared dead.

The Coast Guard has saved 48 out of 200 believed to be aboard the rickety board, said Pietro Carosia of the Italian Coast Guard. But helicopters also have spotted corpses in the sea, Carosia said, declining to provide a number. Continue reading.